The book White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy "reeks of tell-tale signs of being written first and finding facts second," says this researcher.."Only after they settled on a salacious title, it seems, did they go out and try to find what they already agreed to see, with little to no attention paid to whether any of it was true."
New Book on Rural America Started with a False Conclusion, Then Looked for Evidence | Daily Yonder | Nicholas F. Jacobs:
March 6, 2024 - "A new book on 'white rural rage' argues that rural Americans are the most racist, xenophobic, conspiracist, anti-democratic, and violent “geodemographic” subgroup of Americans out there. The authors, Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman, say that their book is driven by data and that even if you don’t like their conclusions the evidence is clear. The problem with this book is not a lack of citations; they 'bring the receipts,' as they like to boast. The problem is that those receipts belong in the trash.... The book reeks of tell-tale signs of being written first and finding facts second. Only after they settled on a salacious title, it seems, did they go out and try to find what they already agreed to see, with little to no attention paid to whether any of it was true.... I offer a more comprehensive list of each survey and poll they use here, and briefly describe my concerns below.
"The first problem is that the vast majority of data lacks any consistent definition of what they mean by the word “rural.” This hole gives the authors license to pick and choose various points from whatever surveys they want.... Consider, as just one of several examples, a method by the polling firm IPSOS, which informs work from the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) that Schaller and Waldman use to prove that rural folks are distinctively drawn to QAnon conspiracies. IPSOS defines rural as any resident living in a county that is not a part of any Metropolitan Statistical Area (a place with a dense urban center of 50,000 people or more). The Census, however, estimates that 54% of all rural people actually live inside those 'metropolitan' areas — areas excluded by the IPSOS definition. Consequently, this result about 'rural America” is drawn from a survey that excludes a majority of rural residents. One wonders if the authors cared to think about what this actually means for their results....
"Second, ... Schaller and Waldman seem to willfully neglect any concern over sample sizes. More often than not, the surveys that inform this 'data-driven' account simply do not get enough respondents who are even from rural areas, however defined. Yes, survey outlets will report out what 'rural' individuals said, but a closer look shows that those rural estimates often draw on just a few hundred people.... Consider a poll by the Institute of Politics, which Waldman and Schaller reference to show that rural Americans are the most likely to 'take up arms against the government.' That claim depends on just 220 rural residents and 290 city residents. As such, if 35% of rural residents agree, and 29% of city residents agree, probabilistically they are indistinguishable from one another. Or consider another poll by Marist University, which Schaller and Waldman say proves the point that rural residents are more likely to believe in nonexistent voter fraud. That conclusion depends on a grand total of 167 rural individuals. Not only are the margins of error too big to be meaningful, you might wonder, can you even get a representative portrayal of rural America with that many people.
"Because most surveys are done to get a representative picture of the national population, even when they do have adequate sample sizes, seldom do the rural respondents in the poll actually represent the demographics of rural America..... In the last seven years, I’ve surveyed over 25,000 rural residents. My experience is that the first to respond and fill that 'rural' quota are older and more conservative than average. Getting young rural folks is hard, and most surveys might only have a handful.... This demographic imbalance exists even in high-quality surveys, because most surveys are designed to make claims about the national population. Surveys weights are therefore used to adjust samples to mirror national demographic patterns. In the case of the American National Election Study, for example, this means that any estimate about rural residents inflates the voices of the most elderly residents (65+), because ANES weights create an incorrect demographic snapshot of rural America, with 30% more elderly residents than what the U.S. Census says should exist.
"Only two surveys in the entire book conform to basic standards of survey research and even attempt to try and present an accurate picture of rural America: a 2017 study from The Washington Post and Kaiser Family Foundation (1,070 rural residents) and a 2018 report from the Pew Research Center (2,085 rural residents).... Of course, not even these are perfect. Because it focuses on rural communities, the WAPO/KFF study only includes 303 urban and 307 suburban respondents – small samples. Consider what this means when interpreting who thinks that 'immigrants today strengthen our country,' one of the questions Schaller and Waldman use to show just how xenophobic rural people allegedly are. Once you account for the margin of error (which Schaller and Waldman never report once in the book), rural residents actually believe the same thing as suburban residents; indeed, one question down (remember cherry-picking?), the survey shows that rural residents are just as likely as urban residents to say that 'most immigrants coming to the U.S. in the last 10 years are doing enough to adapt to the American way of life.' Can you find the rural rage?
"The final problem is the worst one because it exists even if you account for problems of defining rurality and getting large, representative samples. Throughout the book, Schaller and Waldman solely rely on group comparisons – a true indication that their analysis is driven more by a desire to confirm one’s beliefs than to find real evidence.... Nowhere in this book is there any attempt to understand what motivates rural people, in particular, to think one thing or another. Are these really rural problems, or are they the product of some other demographic characteristic such as age, race, or gender? Is the 'rage' supposedly felt in rural areas really different than elsewhere? We just cannot tell from group averages alone.
"[T]he way we would really test why certain groups behave a certain way – be it conspiracies or vaccines — is to compare individuals within and between those groups so that we can account for the multiple differences that they might have in common. Schaller and Waldman themselves never dig this deep.... But I got some of their data and did the work. Using the individual-level data provided by the 2018 Pew study, for example, I tested Schaller and Waldman’s claims that rural residents are distinctively 'xenophobic.' At a group level, 57% (+/- 1.1) of rural residents compared to 35 % (+/- 0.68) of urbanites, agree that a 'growing number of newcomers from other countries threatens traditional American customs and values.' I relied on widely used and understood tools of statistical inference (i.e., a regression model) to understand what best explains a person’s response to that question. Ruralness? Maybe. But maybe they answer that way because of age, sex, level of education, party identification, income, race, some religious beliefs, or all of the above.
"Here’s the model’s results. Bottom line: when we include those characteristics in a model that also accounts for where someone lives, geographic differences disappear. Rural residents are statistically no more likely to think 'xenophobic' beliefs on account of their rurality. Attitudes here are almost entirely attributable to partisan identity. Being rural ... is statistically meaningless, because what drives those group averages is solely a function of Republican partisan identity. That is, rural residents are thinking the same way about that issue as urban and suburban residents.... [I]f the goal of White Rural Rage is to say that the threat to American democracy is emanating from the heartland, the data just do not support that idea."
Read more: https://dailyyonder.com/commentary-white-rural-rage-which-came-first-the-title-or-the-research/2024/03/06/
The Media's New Favorite Topic: 'White Rural Rage' | Matt Walsh | March 4, 2024:
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