Kentucky election shows 'rural America is Republican,' former congressman says

The results of last week's election for governor of Kentucky show that "Urban America is Democratic, and rural America is Republican," former U.S. Rep. Ben Chandler, left, a 2012 victim of the state's increasing Republicanism, told The Woodford Sun for a post-election analysis. (Chandler's family owns the weekly newspaper in Versailles.)

The rural-urban split is clear when the state's counties are sorted by metropolitan and rural classifications. Republican Matt Bevin got 61.5 percent of the vote in the counties that are most rural in the U.S. Department of Agriculture's nine-point scale or urbanity and rurality. Democrat Jack Conway got 35.2 percent of the vote in those counties.

Conway carried the most urban counties, but barely: 49.3 percent to 47.2 percent. Overall, in the face that included a minor independent candidate, Bevin won by 8.7 percentage points.