Samuel Abrams of the American Enterprise Institute warns readers not to overemphasize the extent of the divisions between urban and rural America.

In “The Left Behind,” Princeton sociologist Robert Wuthnow makes the case that rural Americans, when they think of problems facing the nation, focus more on issues of morality and governance in Washington than on economic considerations. But, despite media perceptions and Wuthnow’s thousands of interviews of rural Americans, the argument that urban and rural areas have diverged in terms of their priorities does not hold up when we look at decades of survey work.

I compiled national samples of New York Times survey data from 2006 through 2016 — the same time frame used by Wuthnow. These surveys regularly asked thousands of Americans: “What do you think is the most important problem facing the country today?” I then broke down the data by urban areas, with suburbs included, and found no geographic differences whatsoever. Rural Americans and city dwellers exhibited practically the same priorities over time. …

… [A]t no point does the survey data show that economic concerns are any less important to rural Americans than to urban dwellers — or that moral, family, or religious values are more important to the people living in small towns than they are to those living in big cities.

From June 2015 through the start of 2016 — the period of Trump’s rise and of a notable increase in partisan incivility — 25 percent of urban and suburban residents cited economic concerns as the most important issue facing the nation compared to 22 percent of rural dwellers. Eleven percent of city dwellers cited concerns about leadership in the government compared to 16 percent of rural Americans. Cultural questions, including on immigration, gun control, race relations, and poverty, were more salient in urban areas at 21 percent compared to 16 percent in rural areas. Not a significant difference. Finally, while moral considerations were highest in rural areas at 7 percent compared to 4 percent in urban areas including the suburbs, this is, again, a minor difference.