Race or Place: Partisanship Among Black Rural Voters

Abstract

Rural voters are often portrayed as a monolith of White and conservative, although 22% of the rural population are non-White. Rural minorities, specifically Black rural voters, intersect two potentially competing identities informing political partisanship. First, place: there is a growing geographic schism between rural and urban voters, with rural voters aligning more closely with the Republican party. Second, race: there is a political gap between White and Black voters, with Black voters aligning more closely with the Democratic party. Using data from the 2019 and 2020 ANES Studies I investigate the effects of these intersecting identities on political identification accounting for rural resentment. Rural resentment, or feelings of a loss of political power to urban areas, is found among both White and Black rural voters. For Black rural voters, a strong race identity can buffer the effects of rural resentment, keeping them from pushing toward the Republican party.