Replication Data for: A Registered Report on Place-Based Resentment: Exploring Urban-Rural Tensions in Sweden

This Registered Report examines urban–rural tensions in Sweden—a historically egalitarian, multi-party welfare state with strong geographical equalisation schemes, making it a least-likely case for place-based resentment theories. Using an online survey experiment (n = 2,051), we measured resentment through perceptions of ingroup and outgroup, and by experimentally varying whether political statements came from rural or urban politicians. Rural respondents showed stronger ingroup identification, greater place-based resentment, and more negative stereotypes of their outgroup than urban respondents. However, we find no evidence of place-based bias—i.e., that rural respondents are less receptive to urban politicians’ statements, or vice versa. These findings reveal clear urban–rural tensions in a context often considered unlikely for such divides, underscoring the role of regional identities in political discourse and policy in multi-party welfare states beyond Anglo-Saxon settings, while indicating that these tensions do not translate into systematic bias in evaluating political statements.