Rural Decline and Spatial Voting Patterns

Abstract

Abstract How does rural decline affect electoral politics? A well-known argument is that the growing geographical polarisation of populations between prospering major cities and declining hinterlands is emerging as a cleavage of electoral politics in developed countries. But prior work has focussed on specific outcomes of rural decline rather than examining whether the geographical distribution of political attitudes and behaviours within countries has become more uneven in the last decades. Using a measure of party nationalisation capturing spatial differences in electoral support across districts in OECD countries over the last 60 years, we find that a declining rural population increases differences in the geographical distribution of partisan support within countries. Nationalisation determines a party’s orientation toward distribution of public resources and support for region-specific interests.