If you pay attention to public discourse about rural populations, you might have noticed something missing in the aftermath of the 2024 presidential election: think-pieces on rural voters. These think-pieces—musing on rural voters’ motivations, their seemingly disproportionate susceptibility to Donald Trump’s appeal, and their role in deciding the most recent election—were everywhere after the 2016 presidential election that led to Trump’s first term. Even in 2020, after Joe Biden’s victory and evidence of more complexity in rural voting patterns, analysts and pundits seemed eager to assess the role of the rural vote. Yet, rural voters just don’t seem to be top of mind for this round of post-election analysis. Why might that be?

A periodic collection of recent research, analysis, and other notable rural items.

In Persistently Poor, Left-behind and Chronically Disconnected, Kenan Fikri (Economic Innovation Group), provides an analysis of persistent poverty in places across the United States, focusing on multiple factors contributing to the disconnection [SE1] of these areas from the rest of the US. Disconnection refers to a lack of social and economic ties, leading to isolation from the greater economy.

In Moving Water: Managed Retreat of Wester Agricultural Water Rights for Instream Flows, authors Stephanie Stern (Arizona Law) and A. Dan Tarlock (Chicago Kent College of Law) discuss the current state of water rights in the West and advocate for a change in federal policy to reallocate Western water rights to address the effects of the “megadrought.”

In Reimagining Rural Health Equity: Understanding Disparities And Orienting Policy, Practice, And Research In Rural America, Anne N. Sosin and Elizabeth A. Carpenter-Song (Both Anthropology, Dartmouth College) argue that advancing rural health equity beyond the pandemic requires understanding the underlying problems that create rural disparities and redesigning the policies and practices that encourage the rural disadvantage. 

A periodic collection of recent research, analysis, and other notable rural items.

In Fears and Fences: Social and Material Barriers to Plains Bison on the Canadian Prairies, authors Forrest Hisey, Melissa Heppner (both Geography, Geomatics, and Environment, University of Toronto, Mississauga), and Andrea Olive (Political Science, University of Toronto, Mississauga) conduct a qualitative study to determine the largest barriers to the “rewilding” of bison on the Canadian Great Plains with a particular focus on the colonial attitudes that conflict with Indigenous groups’ efforts to reintroduce bison.

In Shared Stewardship, Elizabeth Kronk Warner and Jesús A. Salazar (Both Law, University of Utah) challenge the trend of excluding tribes from participation of co-stewardship of national lands.  The authors examine the existing standards and offer creative solutions to forging a path to tribal co-stewardship.

Call for Papers - Law & Rurality Workshop - Hosted Virtually Fall 2025