Republicans still won rural America, but the more rural a place, the more likely Democrats were to gain from 2016

"Republicans gained seats in the U.S. Senate in the last election, but it’s Democrats who gained in popularity among rural voters," compared to the presidential election in 2016, Bill Bishop and Tim Marema report for The Daily Yonder.

"Midterm elections always attract fewer voters than presidential elections," they write. "So we expect the raw vote total to decline. But in rural counties, the raw number of voters who selected the Democratic candidate actually increased from 2016 to 2018." The trend was even plainer when comparing the increase in Democratic votes.

"Even though Democrats substantially improved their performance with rural voters in these states this year, they still lost the popular vote in rural counties," the Yonder notes. "Democrats trimmed the Republican margin of victory in the states we examined from 40 points to 22."

The Yonder looked at the available tabulations of votes in 28 Senate elections, grouping counties by metropolitan-to-rural categories, and found that "Democrats improved their performance across the board from 2016 and that the biggest gains came in the more rural counties." Bishop and Marema acknowledge that "Comparing presidential elections to midterm elections is a bit of an apples-to-oranges exercise." They omitted California because there was no Republican on the Senate ballot, and counted Independent Bernie Sanders of Vermont as a Democrat.

States included in the analysis were Arizona, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia and Wyoming.