Asymmetries in Urban, Suburban, and Rural Place-Based Resentment

This paper investigates the size, socio-demographic correlates, and political implications of place-based resentment in urban, suburban, and rural areas, with a particular focus on similarities and differences in high-resentment individuals across place types. We focus on three research questions. First, we ask how place resentment varies across all possible combinations of urban, suburban, and rural in-groups and out-groups. Second, we explore if high-resentment individuals in urban, suburban, and rural areas share similar socio-demographic and political characteristics. Finally, we investigate how citizens' satisfaction with their elected representatives, and positions on contentious and important policy issues, are related to place-based resentment. We investigate these questions using two large-scale surveys of the Canadian public. We find that place-based resentment is highly asymmetric: resentment is strongest among rural residents regardless of the target (suburban or urban) of their resentment, whereas urban and suburban residents tend to resent each other more than either group resents rural areas. We also find substantial asymmetries in the correlates and political implications of place resentment. Our findings suggest that place resentment is an important and politically consequential phenomenon across all place types, but also that the character and strength of this resentment is quite different in rural, suburban, and urban places.