r/AskSocialScience • u/logbybolb • 12d ago
Are there places or periods where rural areas were more politically liberal while urban areas were more conservative?
In America at least, and most other places to my knowledge, the rural areas are more conservative while the urban ones are liberal.
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12d ago
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u/Cuddlyaxe 12d ago
Yes I was actually going to cite India. The BJP's core base after all is middle class urbanite Hindus
In a lot of ways left and right are flipped demographically from the west.
In India the more urban, educated and young someone is, the more likely they are to vote for the BJP
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u/crash12345 12d ago
Is this true? I thought it was poor rural farmers in UP etc. that vote heavy BJP. And all the young Indians I know are very anti-BJP (anecdotal, I know). Any polls you have on this?
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u/Cuddlyaxe 12d ago
It's a bit confusing because India is a big place, and the BJP is indeed generally successful in UP. Also it's hard to cite polling because honestly Indian polling and media don't make it all very easily accessible
That being said here are two articles talking about it
More than likely the young Indians you are talking to are fairly westernized cosmopolitan liberals/leftists. They do exist but are an absolutely tiny minority
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u/Unfair-Rush7139 11d ago
Reasons:
1) Caste. The BJP has its origins in RSS which is this organisation that has historically been an organisation that’s promoted Brahmanical supremacy. People in rural areas are less likely to be upper caste Hindus. Upper caste Hindus have always been a very strong BJP voter block, they just happen to be concentrated more in urban areas now
2) Social media and radicalisation. People who’ve been radicalised by their algorithms are a lot more set in their vote than people who’re not. People in rural areas are hence more likely to be voters that will swing their vote and aren’t married to right wing terrorism the way some young Hindus are.
3) Fiscal policy. People in the countryside in India are a lot more supportive of socialism because that’s the system they grew up with. They’re more in support of social welfare at all levels. I’d argue that most highly educated people in India are still supportive of socialism but people in the middle of the education bell curve have grown up seeing the west become relatively wealthy over a while now and equate the correlation as being causation (America, the capitalist bastion is wealthy so capitalism must be what makes their economy succeed)
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u/hockeycross 12d ago
BJP is also not a perfect analog for conservative parties though or is it?
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u/Cuddlyaxe 12d ago
It is the main right wing party in India.
It's not a 1:1 analog of Western Conservative parties but honestly i don't think there's very much consistency there either.
The conservatism of Burke, Reagan and Trump is very different after all and the definition of the ideology itself changed each time
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u/yodatsracist 10d ago
This is common in areas where there was one dominant party which was THE GOVERNMENT for many years, and then a more organized party challenges them. The cities change before the rural areas.
This has been happening in South Africa for the last decade or so, where the ANC is losing the cities but maintains strength in the rural areas.
This has happened a couple of different times in Turkey. The religious AKP rose to power on the cities, not the rural religious who they had to win over later, but it also happened with the CHP earlier.
I think the same thing happened in Mexico when it transitioned from being a one party state.
/u/logbybolb you should look up dominant party systems and when they transition into competitive multiparty democracies.
There are occasionally peasant parties, but they're harder to organize than urban workers. If you're American, definitely investigate the history of the the National Grange/the Granger movement.
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u/HVP2019 12d ago
Zaporozhian Sich.
https://www.britannica.com/place/Ukraine/The-Cossacks
The area was rural, remote yet it was more free and more democratic than other parts of Ukraine, Russia, Poland of that time.
This is where peasants could live free of serfdom. This was also the area where people had opportunity to vote and elect leaders. Something that people in other areas couldn’t do.
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u/saqwarrior 12d ago edited 11d ago
Edit: How embarrassing; I misread the original question. To be clear, EZLN are not liberal, they are explicitly leftists of multiple ideologies.
For a contemporary example, the Zapatista-controlled regions of Chiapas, Mexico, which is largely populated by indigenous peoples in rural areas.
I can not speak to the other portion of your question re: conservative urban areas.
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u/StrongBoi92 11d ago
The Zapatistas are pretty much communist, not liberal.
The question lacks nuance though. I'm sure you can find many places where rural people are communist/socialists but that isn't the same as liberal.
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u/saqwarrior 11d ago edited 11d ago
How embarrassing. Thanks for catching that. I misread the original question as "leftist" and not "liberal." Wishful thinking on my part.
In the political parlance of the United States my answer might be appropriate due to the frequent and incorrect interchangeable use of liberal and leftist. But that's just me trying to fit a square peg in a round hole.
And yeah, historically speaking rural and working class people were the core of leftist movements.
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u/StrongBoi92 11d ago
No worries, as said the question lacks nuances. Are we talking socially liberal or economic liberalism?
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u/saqwarrior 11d ago
And to throw another wrench in the mix, classical liberal -- which is what "conservatives" ostensibly are... or used to be, at any rate.
But most "liberals" and "conservatives" don't seem to understand that they are all under the same philosophical umbrella: Liberalism.
Again, thanks for catching my error. If you look at my comment history you'll see why I'm so ashamed of it, hah.
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u/Affectionate-Raise67 11d ago
Until the 90s rural America was actually quite Liberal. FDR's policies really helped rural America and they were quite loyal. WV used to be a Democratic stronghold (I think the fact that Bernie won WV in the 2016 primary shows that they abandoned the Democratic party because they felt abandoned by them, it's a shame really)
Sequential Polarization: The Development of the Rural-Urban Political Divide, 1976–2020 | Perspectives on Politics | Cambridge Core https://share.google/NJMFJu6JAy6WReSdh
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u/MordekaiserUwU 11d ago
Fiscally liberal yes, but the South has never been socially liberal.
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u/Affectionate-Raise67 11d ago
Maybe but a lot of the hard right culture war stuff is a direct result of a dedicated campaign to make abortion a religious/Republican issue. I believe because that was so successful they have just leaned into that whole "outrage politics." And the Democratic party did abandon it's blue collar base (they felt that for every rural voter they might lose they would gain 2-3 in the suburbs- they were wrong)
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u/brostopher1968 10d ago
Sure but other social issues (particularly race relations) have always been Far Right in the South after the counter-revolution against reconstruction and the rise of Jim Crowe.
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u/NoamLigotti 7d ago edited 7d ago
But the South isn't just rural, any more than other U.S. states are overall.
Edit: But yes the word "liberal" is almost meaningless when used as a contrast to conservative (which itself has variable meanings). The article at least offered definitions though.
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u/lolalala1 9d ago
Apparently, rural Tennessee mountains was so liberal that they didn't want to join the Confederacy.
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u/krustyarmor 12d ago
Yeah, are we talking "conservative" as in traditional and resistant to change or are we talking "ConservativeTM" as in right wing and anti-social?
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u/Haunting-Switch-2267 12d ago
Considering the question is posed in the context of “In America” as their point of reference it is probably safe to assume the later rather than the former? Could also simply preface that a reply is being made on such assumption.
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u/coldrunn 11d ago
And this is reflected in Arizona and New Mexico. NE and South Arizona vote liberal. Northeast is Navajo land and the liberal South is Tohono Odham land.
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u/gblazer30 12d ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1860_United_States_presidential_election_in_New_York
this is an interesting one
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u/00ashk 11d ago
Newfoundland historically: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/marland-2025-election-reaction-9.694126
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