Place Consciousness and Voting in Canada

Abstract Building on Cramer’s (2016) foundational work on rural consciousness, we measure place consciousness in Canada as a unified construct capturing both in-group place identification and out-group place resentment. Using data from a large-scale Canadian survey, we then examine how place consciousness relates to federal voting behaviour across a novel typology of six urban, suburban, and rural place types. We find that place consciousness is strongest on the ends of the urban-rural continuum; in low- and high-income rural places, and in core urban contexts with large shares of knowledge economy workers. Strong place consciousness relates to Conservative voting in the former places, and Liberal voting in the latter. Place consciousness is weaker in suburban and working-class urban places, and less systematically related to voting behaviour. By examining place consciousness across place types, our findings reveal the nuanced ways in which place identity and resentment shape vote choice across Canada’s urban–rural cleavage.