Who lives where? Compositional roots of the rural–urban divide in far-right populist support across Western Europe

The rise of far-right populism across Western democracies has sparked academic and public interest in its spatial dimension. Many seminal theories on the causes of far-right populism identify the rural–urban dimension as a crucial line of conflict in contemporary Western societies. However, we have surprisingly little comparative, cross-country evidence about its overlap with other social grievances. Specifically, this paper asks to what extent descriptive rural–urban differences reflect other social divides due to the unequal distribution of social groups along spatial lines. In an analysis of recent European Social Survey data from 15 Western European countries, I find significant rural–urban differences in twelve of them. A decomposition analysis using the KHB-method reveals that the estimated rural–urban difference is nearly halved once individual socio-demographic characteristics are controlled for. The compositional effects are mainly driven by differences in education, social class and—to a smaller extent—ethnic origin, but not by individual economic hardship, gender and age. I conclude that the rural–urban dimension of far-right populism is indeed evident across Western Europe and it’s also a reflection of the conflict between the ‘new’ high-educated, post-industrial middle class and the ‘old’ manual middle class.