The rural-urban cleavage in US presidential elections: Stability and sudden change

Recent elections in the United States are characterized by a strong urban-rural divide, with rural voters being more likely to vote for the Republican Party and Democratic support concentrated in large urban centers. While much attention has been given to the sources of Republican support among rural voters, less is known about how this divide has emerged over time. Using data from the American National Election Studies (ANES), the Cooperative Election Study (CES), and the General Social Survey (GSS), we trace longitudinal trends in the association between living in rural areas and voting in US presidential elections. Our results show that the rural-urban divide was stable for an extended period of time but suddenly became more pronounced in the 2016 and 2020 elections. Comparative analysis reveals that this cleavage now surpasses gender and income divisions in importance, though it remains weaker than race and religious cleavages. We also show that this sudden strengthening of the rural-urban divide is driven by both rural Democrats switching to the Republican Party and urban Republicans switching to supporting Democratic candidates.