Power of Place: Survey Experiment on 502 Rural Americans' Policy Support

Aggregating results from a preregistered survey experiment of 502 rural respondents conducted by Lukas K. Alexander for the Journal of Experimental Political Science. It measures how place-based identity influences policy support and political trust when laws are proposed by representatives sharing a rural identity. The data was last updated in March 2026.

Use Cases

• Analyzing the correlation between lawmaker identity and respondent policy support levels
• Evaluating the impact of rural descriptive representation on perceived policy benefits for rural communities
• Measuring baseline political trust levels in rural lawmakers compared to non-rural counterparts

Strengths

• Preregistered experimental design ensures methodological transparency
• Targeted sample of 502 rural respondents provides specific demographic focus
• Peer-reviewed origin from the Journal of Experimental Political Science

Limitations

• Small sample size of 502 respondents limits generalizability to the broader U.S. population
• Potential geographic bias depending on the regional distribution of the rural sample
• Self-reported survey data is subject to respondent recall and social desirability bias

Provenance

Source

Journal of Experimental Political Science

Collection Method

Preregistered survey experiment

Freshness

Last updated March 2026; static replication dataset.

Geography

United States (Rural)