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Urban–rural differences in partisan political loyalty are as familiar in the United States as they are in other countries. In this paper, we examine Gallup survey data from the early-2000s through 2018 to understand the urban–rural fissure that has been so noticeable in recent elections. We consider the potential mechanisms of an urban–rural political divide. We suggest that urban and rural dwellers oppose each other because they reside in far apart locations without much interaction and support different political parties because population size structures opinion quite differently in small towns compared with large cities. In particular, we consider the extent to which the compositional characteristics (i.e., race, income, education, etc.) of the individuals living in these locales drives the divide. We find that sizable urban–rural differences persist even after accounting for an array of individual-level characteristics that typically distinguish them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Empirical studies that include travel-related attitudes to identify the role of residential self-selection in the relationship between the built environment and travel behaviour display a wide variety in the type of attitudes that they include, the relationships between the variables that they analyse and the ways they measure attitude. This paper discusses what theories on attitudes and behaviour can contribute to examining the role of self-selection and reviews those studies on residential self-selection and travel behaviour that explicitly include attitudes. Although several studies state that residential self-selection is accounted for by the inclusion of attitudes, the complexity of the inclusion and the measurement of attitudes often leads to an underestimation of the role of residential self-selection. Because of their relevance to the reliability of results, the options for measuring travel-related attitudes are also discussed. When attitudes are included in questionnaires, it is essential to consider reliability, efficiency, response and the number of variables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]