Landscape of Distrust: Political Trust Across America’s Urban-Rural Divide

• Published date: 01 January 2025
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/1532673X241273220
• Author: James R. G. Kirk
• Date: 01 January 2025

Article

American Politics Research

2025, Vol. 53(1) 28–35

© The Author(s) 2024

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DOI: 10.1177/1532673X241273220

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Landscape of Distrust: Political Trust Across

America’s Urban-Rural Divide

James R. G. Kirk

1



Abstract

Do rural Americans trust the government less than non-rural Americans? In an era of declining trust in government and mounting

geographic polarization, this research examines the relationship between geography, identity, and attitudes of political trust in the

United States. Using national survey data from the 2016 and 2020 American National Election Studies time series surveys, this

quantitative analysis tests hypotheses that rurality in the context of place and place-based identity is associated with lower trust in the

federal government. Overall, the results show that both living in and identifying with more rural areas corresponds with decreased

government trust, regardless of the political party of the incumbent president. These findings contribute to the understanding of

America’s urban-rural political divide and suggest significant implications for both partisan leaders and policymakers.

Keywords

rural politics, trust, urban-rural divide

From public health skepticism to the embrace of the anti-

establishment politics of Donald Trump, signs of political

distrust appear to persist across rural America. Amidst the

COVID-19 pandemic, CDC data has shown that vaccination

rates in rural counties severely lagged those in urban counties

(Saelee et al., 2022), confirming early reports of rural re-

sistance to federal government health programs and infor-

mation during the pandemic (Ivory et al., 2021;Jackson &

Chablani, 2021). Beyond COVID-19, the modern era of

American partisanship has proven rural America to be a

stronghold of Donald Trump and Trump-backed candidates,

who often center anti-establishment distrust in their politics

(Gamio, 2016;Kurtzleben, 2016).

Motivated by these geographically divergent social and

political outcomes, I seek to question if in fact political trust

varies across America’s urban-rural continuum. Do Ameri-

cans living in, or identifying with, a more rural area trust the

government less? Answering this question is critical to un-

derstanding the contours of conservative political shifts in

rural America. Examining political trust across the urban-

rural divide also deepens our understanding of rural political

consciousness (Cramer, 2016;Jacobs & Munis, 2023;Lunz

Trujillo & Crowley, 2022) by providing important details

regarding the relationship between rural identity and gov-

ernment. This article examines the issue of rural political

distrust specifically, and uses national survey data to provide

new evidence of lower government trust among rural

Americans. In doing so, this study answers the critical

question of if political distrust is indeed another fault line

between urban and rural individuals.

Building upon research on political trust and the study of

America’s urban-rural divide, (Cramer, 2012;2016;Lunz

Trujillo, 2022;McKay et al., 2021), this paper considers the

relationship between place, place-based identity, and po-

litical trust in American politics. Specifically, I hypothesize

that both living in a more rural area and identifying with a

more rural area will be associated with lower levels of

government trust. Using national survey data across mul-

tiple recent elections, varying incumbency contexts, and a

series of measures of rurality, this paper examines the as-

sociation between the places that Americans inhabit, the

places that they identify with, and their political trust. The

results of this analysis provide evidence that in both recent

Democratic and Republican administrations, living in and

identifying with a more rural area corresponds to lower

levels of political trust.

1

Department of Political Science, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame,

IN, USA

Corresponding Author:

James R. G. Kirk, Department of Political Science, University of Notre Dame,

2060 Jenkins Nanovic Halls, Notre Dame, IN 46556, USA.

Email: jkirk6@nd.edu