In a presidential election year, eyes turn toward the many distinct groups that make up the electorate. So what's up with the rural voter? It's a group that voted Republican by a margin of 70 to 80 percent over their Democratic rivals in many rural communities, noted Nick Jacobs and Dan Shea, the authors of The Rural Voter: The Politics of Place and the Disuniting of America.
While the GOP advantage among rural voters may have been 60 percent several decades ago, a steep divide between city and country voters began as far back as 1980, said Shea.
Along with studying voting patterns over the years, the two professors at Colby College in Maine conducted what they consider the largest single study of the rural voter, surveying 10,000 rural voters across the country, said Jacobs.
Rural voters tend to think that place is important, he said. What pushes so many away from the Democrats is the feeling that rural values have been neglected by that party.
Another point that Jacobs and Shea make in their book is the problem that rural residents now face in getting information, particularly about local politics. The demise of so many small-town newspapers in recent years means less local rural news. That means more get their news from television where the focus is on national issues.
Jacobs and Shea don't think major media outlets have done a very good job in portraying rural America, often succumbing to "rural rabble-rousers," focusing on outgoing individuals who want to be interviewed, thereby diverting attention from more mainstream rural attitudes.
That leads to a widening in the gulf between urban and rural, said Shea. When the media focus is on the rabble-rouser, the urban viewer/reader is likely to think "They're all lunatics out there" (in rural America), he said.
Survey results also pointed to a misconception that rural residents are stuck where they are, that they've struggled to leave but failed. "These are not the wastelands of alienation that people want to leave. They don't want to move. They want to stay where they are," said Shea.
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