Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t8hqh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-28T16:05:01.807Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Rural Voters and the Polarization of American Presidential Elections

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 January 2008

Seth C. McKee
Seth C. McKee
Affiliation:
University of South Florida St. Petersburg
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In political science, urban politics is a well-established subfield. And more recently, suburban political behavior has received a fair amount of attention (Gainsborough 2001; 2005; McKee and Shaw 2003; Oliver 2001). But with a few exceptions (see Francia and Baumgartner 2005–2006; Gimpel and Karnes 2006), the political behavior of rural residents has been conspicuously absent thus far in a growing literature on the political role of place. This is quite surprising given the clamoring in the popular press about “red states” versus “blue states” in the most recent presidential contests. All of the post-presidential election maps that highlight red Republican counties and blue Democratic counties display a sea of red covering the vast swaths of rural, middle America. The ocean of Republican red is enough to make one ask: What's the Matter with Kansas? (Frank 2004)—one of those thinly populated plains states with hardly a glimmer of blue on a county-level map of the 2004 presidential election.

Type
FEATURES
Information
PS: Political Science & Politics , Volume 41 , Issue 1 , January 2008 , pp. 101 - 108
Copyright
© 2008 The American Political Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abramowitz, Alan, and Kyle Saunders. 2005. “Why Can't We All Just Get Along? The Reality of a Polarized America.” The Forum 3 (2), Article 1.Google Scholar
Ansolabehere, Stephen, James M. Snyder Jr., and Charles Stewart_III. 2000. “Old Voters, New Voters, and the Personal Vote: Using Redistricting to Measure the Incumbency Advantage.” American Journal of Political Science 44 (1): 17–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bartels, Larry. 2006. “What's the Matter with What's the Matter with Kansas?” Quarterly Journal of Political Science 1 (2): 201–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bartley, Numan V., and Hugh D. Graham. 1975. Southern Politics and the Second Reconstruction. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Black, Earl, and Merle Black. 2002. The Rise of Southern Republicans. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Black, Earl, and Merle Black. 1992. The Vital South: How Presidents Are Elected. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Black, Earl, and Merle Black. 1987. Politics and Society in the South. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Campbell, Angus, Philip E. Converse, Warren E. Miller, and Donald E. Stokes. 1960. The American Voter. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Carmines, Edward G., and James A. Stimson. 1989. Issue Evolution: Race and the Transformation of American Politics. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Desposato, Scott W., and John R. Petrocik. 2003. “The Variable Incumbency Advantage: New Voters, Redistricting, and the Personal Vote.” American Journal of Political Science 47 (1): 18–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fiorina, Morris P., Samuel J. Abrams, and Jeremy C. Pope. 2006. Culture War? The Myth of a Polarized America, Second edition. New York: Longman.Google Scholar
Flanigan, William H., and Nancy H. Zingale. 2006. Political Behavior of the American Electorate. Washington, D.C.: CQ Press.Google Scholar
Francia, Peter L., and Jody Baumgartner. 2005–2006. “Victim or Victor of the ‘Culture War?’ How Cultural Issues Affect Support for George W. Bush in Rural America.” American Review of Politics 26 (winter): 349–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frank, Thomas. 2005. “Class is Dismissed.” Manuscript. www.tcfrank.com/dismissd.pdf.Google Scholar
Frank, Thomas. 2004. What's the Matter with Kansas: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America. New York: Metropolitan Books.Google Scholar
Frederickson, Kari A. 2001. The Dixiecrat Revolt and the End of the Solid South, 1932–1968. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Gainsborough, Juliet F. 2005. “Voters in Context: Cities, Suburbs, and Presidential Vote.” American Politics Research 33 (3): 435–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gainsborough, Juliet F. 2001. Fenced Off: The Suburbanization of American Politics. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University.Google Scholar
Gimpel, James G., and Kimberly A. Karnes. 2006. “The Rural Side of the Urban-Rural Gap.” PS: Political Science and Politics 39 (3): 467–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gimpel, James G., and Jason E. Schuknecht. 2004. Patchwork Nation: Sectionalism and Political Change in American Politics. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gould, Lewis L. 2003. Grand Old Party: A History of the Republicans. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Green, Donald, Bradley Palmquist, and Eric Schickler. 2002. Partisan Hearts and Minds: Political Parties and the Social Identities of Voters. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Greenberg, Anna, David Walker, and Bill Greener. 2005. “The Message from Rural America: The Rural Vote in 2004.” Battle Creek, MI: W. K. Kellogg Foundation.Google Scholar
Key, V. O. Jr. [1949] 1996. Southern Politics in State and Nation. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press.Google Scholar
Key, V. O. Jr. 1959. “Secular Realignment and the Party System.” Journal of Politics 21 (2): 198–210.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Key, V. O. Jr. 1955. “A Theory of Critical Elections.” Journal of Politics 17 (1): 3–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lublin, David. 2004. The Republican South: Democratization and Partisan Change. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mann, Brian. 2006. Welcome to the Homeland: A Journey to the Rural Heart of America's Conservative Revolution. Hanover, NH: Steerforth Press.Google Scholar
McKee, Seth C., and Daron R. Shaw. 2003. “Suburban Voting in Presidential Elections.” Presidential Studies Quarterly 33 (1): 135–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Murphy, Reg, and Hal Gulliver. 1971. The Southern Strategy. New York: Scribner.Google Scholar
Oliver, J. Eric. 2001. Democracy in Suburbia. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Oppenheimer, Bruce I. 2005. “Deep Red and Blue Congressional Districts: The Causes and Consequences of Declining Party Competitiveness.” In Congress Reconsidered, 8th ed., eds. Lawrence C. Dodd and Bruce I. Oppenheimer. Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 135–57.Google Scholar
Phillips, Kevin P. 1969. The Emerging Republican Majority. New Rochelle, NY: Arlington House.Google Scholar
Shafer, Byron E., and Richard Johnston. 2006. The End of Southern Exceptionalism: Class, Race, and Partisan Change in the Postwar South. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shaw, Daron R. 2007. The Race to 270: The Electoral College and the Campaign Strategies of 2000 and 2004. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sundquist, James L. 1983. Dynamics of the Party System: Alignment and Realignment of Political Parties in the United States. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press.Google Scholar
Voss, D. Stephen. 1996. “Beyond Racial Threat: Failure of an Old Hypothesis in the New South.” Journal of Politics 58 (4): 1156–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Woodward, C. Vann. 2002. The Strange Career of Jim Crow. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar