Belmont University Research Symposium (BURS)

The Southern Rural Voter’s Revenge: Political Change In an Era of Consistency

Publication Date

2024

College

Liberal Arts and Social Sciences, College of

Department

Political Science, Department of

BURS Faculty Advisor

Dr. Nathan Griffith

Presentation Type

Oral Presentation

Abstract

Is in-migration increasing polarization in the rural South? In the last few years, people from other states have come to settle in the South in droves. The South tends to be more conservative than other regions in the United States, and rural areas, regardless of region, also tend to be more conservative. In-migrants coming to the rural South should then lower levels of polarization, as they are almost by definition less conservative. However, I argue that this increases partisan polarization between urban and rural areas in the South because they are not a random selection of citizens of other states. These self-selecting in-migrants feed into pre-existing patterns of polarization, thereby making the rural South’s politics more polarized and separated from those of the urban South. First, I examine the results of a survey asking about respondents’ views of the other party before asking if southern respondents answered more harshly than non-southern respondents. Then I plan to look more in-depth at in-migration flows to Tennessee counties, differentiating between urban and rural, to see if these flows correspond to larger winning margins of the presidential vote per county over time.

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