Katherine J. Cramer’s The Politics of Resentment (2016) suggests that we have missed something fundamental about public opinion: that working-class rural voters embody a coherent (if sometimes misplaced) set of non-ideological grievances. This “rural consciousness” manifests as generalized suspicion of urban elites, especially public-sector workers thought to receive undeserved government benefits.

Following Donald Trump’s election, The Politics of Resentment garnered national media attention. ^{Footnote 1} Indeed, Cramer’s thesis helps explain why Trump prevailed in Wisconsin and other Midwestern states. Moreover, the rural-urban partisan gap may help explain electoral behavior in other industrialized Western democracies—such as Great Britain, where support for leaving the European Union was higher in rural areas than in London. ^{Footnote 2}

However, it would be foolish to say The Politics of Resentment is only relevant because of recent events. Had Trump not been elected, the phenomenon Cramer reports would remain. Rather, the book matters because it is uncommonly well-executed; because it re-introduces intensive interviewing ^{Footnote 3} as a scientific method of public opinion research; and because it demonstrates that an ethnographic approach can shed light on research questions that survey instruments sometimes neglect. Few political scientists have the chutzpah to attend 5:00am gas-station coffee hours with cranky small-town residents, often to talk about the perceived irrelevance (or worse) of higher education. Cramer brings that courage to the table. It is sorely needed right now.

The Resentment in the title refers primarily to rural Wisconsin voters’ perception that public-sector workers are undeserving of government support. But it also represents a far-reaching perception that rural America has been left behind. Cramer’s interviewees view urban elites as fatally out-of-touch and ill-equipped to represent rural demands. They see the demand for limited government not as an ideological rallying point, but instead a pragmatic acknowledgement that government will never be on their side. They worry about the corrupting influences of the University of Wisconsin system. They revile the “M&Ms” of Madison and Milwaukee, the two major Democratic strongholds in an otherwise very Republican state. And they experienced the Great Recession as an unremarkable flare-up of their long-standing economic distress.

Cramer engages a long-standing debate about whether citizens have constrained policy preferences. ^{Footnote 4} Her rural, working-class voters have intensely meaningful political attitudes. But these attitudes are non-ideological in the sense that they do not fall neatly along the liberal-conservative spectrum. They reflect predispositions about political elites and beneficiaries of social spending, not a programmatic philosophy of governance. Thus these attitudes have been largely ignored by quantitative analysis. But motivated by Cramer’s arguments, rural consciousness could certainly be operationalized on large-n sample surveys. Moreover, survey methodology could help clarify the extent to which “rural consciousness” is distinct from “working-class consciousness”—two surely related concepts that are difficult to distinguish from an ethnographic approach alone. The Politics of Resentment is a qualitative work, but it has testable implications for readers of all methodological orientations.

We turn now to the difficult task of constructively critiquing The Politics of Resentment. This task is difficult because we do not intend our critique to call into question the importance of Cramer’s work. The Politics of Resentment is a landmark study of place-based political attitudes and identities, which must be read by anyone interested in the vicissitudes of public opinion. That said, we have three primary critiques:

First, The Politics of Resentment does not establish the mechanism by which rural consciousness forms. Cramer sets up her analysis as a non-positivist explanation of an overlooked phenomenon. But even within this research context, there are opportunities missed for establishing the origins of rural consciousness. For example, there are few references to elite cues, whether political or media-driven. Where are Cramer’s small-town residents getting their partisan political information? Who prompted them to partition the world into deserving private-sector workers and undeserving public-sector workers? Why do Madison and Milwaukee conjure up such animosity in the first place? Cramer does offer a content analysis of regional and local newspapers, suggesting little media basis for the attitudes she observes. ^{Footnote 5} But alternative partisan media sources may be more likely to drive resentment narratives.

It is difficult for Cramer to establish a causal mechanism, because her research design involves simply listening to her interviewees. She rarely challenges them (even indirectly) on their substantive analysis of politics. But although this decision gives interviewees a safe space to express politically incorrect sentiments, there are costs to this posture. Consider the following exchange Cramer reports: ^{Footnote 6}

This is just one example of Cramer taking the comments of her interviewees at face value rather than probing them more deeply and critically. Where did John get the (incorrect) idea that there was voter fraud in Pennsylvania, extreme enough that some precincts reported zero votes against Obama? Such detailed accusations do not happen by accident. One possible explanation: Wisconsin is home to one of the densest conservative talk radio media markets in the United States. Conservative pundits like Mark Belling have enormous grassroots appeal, and they were instrumental in facilitating Governor Scott Walker’s political ascent. ^{Footnote 7} By ignoring these sources of elite cues, Cramer not only misses the chance to establish a causal mechanism. She may also overstate the degree to which rural consciousness results from lived experiences, and understate the degree to which rural voters are simply parroting elite-scripted narratives of exploitation.

Second, The Politics of Resentment provides an incomplete treatment of racial issues. Cramer’s interview groups are almost exclusively white. Yet she maintains that racial prejudice is not the principal driver of rural consciousness, because animosity toward public-sector workers is not race-dependent. It may be that rural consciousness is not heavily grounded in racism. But the case could be made more systematically, with more attention to conflicting evidence. Cramer admits that her interviewees made racist remarks (albeit mainly about Native Americans). She notes that for all their bluster about undeserving public-sector workers, rural voters have little animosity toward public-sector workers with whom they regularly interact. This data point certainly hints at racial tension. And one particularly unforgettable interviewee describes Wisconsin as being partitioned by a “Mason-Dixon line” ^{Footnote 8} —separating northern Wisconsin from the southern, urban areas. Cramer acknowledges that this is an implicit racial appeal, ^{Footnote 9} but downplays the role of race in directly fostering the resentment she documents. This conclusion may be premature.

Finally, Cramer does not go far enough in exploring her most provocative conclusion. In Chapter 6, she suggests that rural voters are not small-government ideologues. Indeed, they would prefer more government if it regularly provided them services they feel they deserve but have been denied. For Cramer, rural opposition to big government is purely pragmatic: since government refuses to respond to rural demands, it is better to give up on government altogether than let it reward undeserving (i.e. public-sector) recipients. ^{Footnote 10} Simply put, a claim this important requires more nuanced analysis. Rural voters may indeed be ambivalent about the size of government. But their ambivalence may come from multiple directions, some ideological and some not. Indeed, since The Politics of Resentment mostly neglects the question of elite cues, it seems premature to conclude that rural support for small government is entirely non-ideological.

These critiques aside, The Politics of Resentment starts an important conversation. It convincingly establishes that rural voters think about politics in meaningful ways not captured by the standard liberal-conservative spectrum. If Cramer’s analysis leaves some questions open, this reflects the novelty of her thesis; it is impossible to capture all the dimensions of rural consciousness in one study alone. Scholars should engage with Cramer’s research thoughtfully; she has captured something important, and her analysis is urgently needed.