Rural voters are on Obama's bandwagon

"Barack Obama’s win in Wisconsin Tuesday underscored his rising popularity among rural voters, a constituency that some political observers say has been neglected by national Democrats," writes Neil H. Simon, a Washington reporter for Richmond-based Media General News Service.

Simon cites the analyses of the Center for Rural Strategies, which categorize counties as rural, exurban or urban, based on boundaries of metropolitan areas. They showed Obama getting 37 percent of the rural vote on Super Tuesday, 51 percent the following week in Virginia and Maryland, and 55 percent in Wisconsin last Tuesday. For the Wisconsin analysis, from the Daily Yonder, click here. Exit-poll results, based on precinct locations, showed a similar trend.

The center's vice president for communications, Tim Marema, told Simon that rural voters may just be part of a national Obama bandwagon, because the candidates “have not really made the types of substantive overtures to rural people that would explain the change.” Whatever the reasons, “Rural support is essential support for Democrats to get elected,” U.S. Rep. Rick Boucher of rural Southwest Virginia's 9th District, an Obama supporter, told Simon.

“Elected officials who support Obama said that in rural America, a Clinton at the top of the ticket can be a burden,” Simon reports. However, Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland, who supports Hillary Clinton, told him that rural voters in his state want more specifics than Obama offers. “People who are of the struggling, working class support (Clinton) and you find a lot of those folks in rural areas,” he said. “She's talking in very direct, practical ways.” (Read more)