The division of the U.S. and other advanced societies on political issues has essentially created distinct sub-cultures within contemporary society. This presentation explores how Cultural Consensus Analysis (CCA) can help us understand differences within or between cultures across cultural domains as it relates to rural tourism development. CCA emerged from quantitative anthropology and uses free-listing and pile-sorting techniques to understand cultural agreement and knowledge. I argue that political values can influence tourism preferences and interactions among hosts and residents, especially in rural and community-based tourism where interactions between tourists and locals are often central to the tourism experience. Given that sub-cultures may exist between tourists and hosts as well as within the same community, CCA can be used as an a priori method to understand cultural consensus prior to implementing tourism development initiatives.