Place resentment in ‘the places that don’t matter’: explaining the geographic divide in populist and anti-immigration attitudes

This study tests a novel explanation for geographic divides in populist and anti-immigration attitudes. This explanation centres around place resentment: the feeling that one’s area is ignored by policy makers and that members of one’s local community are misunderstood and disrespected by inhabitants of other areas. I argue that place resentment mediates the relationship between the type of area one inhabits and political attitudes. With representative survey data and contextual data from The Netherlands, I show that place resentment is an important mediator explaining how geographic divides translate into anti-immigration and populist attitudes. Place resentment is a stronger explanation for geographic variation in political attitudes than alternative explanations I explored. The results suggest that place resentment plays a central role in explaining geographic polarization in Western democracies.