Fox poll shows Trump's rural edge way down from 2016

The margin by which the Republican presidential candidate won the nationwide rural vote in the last three elections, compared with the rural margin in the most recent Fox News poll. (Daily Yonder chart; click the image to enlarge it.)

The latest Fox News poll found that President Trump has only a 9-point lead over former vice president Joe Biden, less than one-third of Trump's rural advantage in the last election.

"In 2016, Trump won the rural vote by 33 points — 64 percent compared to Hillary Clinton’s 31 percent. In key battleground states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, Trump’s advantage with rural voters was decisive," Tim Marema and Bill Bishop report for The Daily Yonder. "If Trump’s rural support really is running at about one third of the 2016 level, that spells trouble."

However, Bishop and Marema note that the electoral college tends to give more weight to rural states, so it's unclear how much trouble Trump is in. Read more here for a deeper dive into how the rural vote played out in 2016 and what today's numbers could mean for Trump this November.