Political Minority Identity Maintenance and Parenting in a Rural Small Town☆

Although place‐based partisanship is well‐documented, few scholars explore political polarization within rural communities or how political minorities survive conformity pressures in small towns. Drawing on interviews with 21 parents who reside in a predominantly conservative, rural community in Northern Appalachia, this study uses an identity‐based model of culture in action to analyze how political minority parents maintained their identity during the 2020 presidential election despite facing conflict in the community and their families. I found that political minorities coped with the nonverification of their political identities in the community by using the local college as a resource for political action, local power, and their children's socialization. I argue that political minorities maintained their identities by framing their group as superior to the Republican majority in the community by highlighting their higher status, access to cultural capital, and values associated with their partisan social identity. Within families, however, responses to political disagreements diverged. While some maintained their partisan identities, others adopted a moderate stance. Moderates relied on cultural skills to frame political differences as a matter of tolerance, independence, choice, and separation of morality from political identity. Partisans used their cultural skills to frame political differences as a matter of protecting children from moral harm. This study contributes to a deeper understanding of the coping strategies that political minorities use to negotiate family, community, and political identity amidst increasing political division and geographic sorting.