Examining rural-urban political divide in Western Europe can shed light on U.S. divide, political scientist writes

The growing rural-urban political divide is well-known in America, but it's also a phenomenon in Western Europe, and along the same lines: more conservative people tend to live in more rural areas. There are some theories as to why such a divide exists, and why it cuts the way it does, but Rahsaan Maxwell, an associate professor of political science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, says his research in Western Europe shows that it's because different types of people choose to live in different geographic areas. "People live in urban and rural areas for reasons that are associated with political preferences. My research suggests that these sorting processes drive urban-rural political polarization," he writes for The Washington Post.

For instance, highly educated professionals tend to live in big cities because that's where the jobs are, meaning rural residents tend to be less educated. That matters politically because higher education is correlated with more progressive political views, in both Western Europe and the U.S. But political views may be a cause of such self-sorting, not an effect.

In his research on Switzerland, Maxwell found that people in rural areas with liberal views often move to large cities. "However, it does not work in reverse: Conservatives are not moving into rural areas, at least in Switzerland. Swiss people who move to rural areas are more liberal than the people already living there," Maxwell writes. "This may arise simply because people who make major geographic moves tend to have a higher socioeconomic status and thus more liberal attitudes regardless of where they move."

Some believe that urbanites tend to be more liberal because they're surrounded by diversity, while the opposite is true for more homogeneous rural communities, but Maxwell disputes this. "If this were true, people's political views should change after they move to a different geographic areas. I found that no evidence of this in both Germany and Switzerland. Moving to urban or rural areas did not affect people’s attitudes on immigration, the European Union or support for radical right-wing parties," Maxwell writes. "And in Switzerland, I found no evidence that people became more liberal as their local area became more ethnically diverse."

The bottom line is that differing economic opportunities help create diverging political opinions, not differing geographies, Maxwell's research shows: it just so happens that rural areas tend to have fewer economic opportunities. "If economic opportunities continue to be geographically divided, political divides across space will likely deepen. And if geographic mobility declines overall, as it has in the United States, urban-rural divides are likely to remain," Maxwell writes.