Trump's support is lower in swing states than in 2016, and his rural backing has dropped over the past six months

"The big margin of support among rural voters that helped Donald Trump secure victory four years ago is looking less firm in 2020 with the potential to shift the outcomes in key battleground states," Mike Dorning reports for Bloomberg. Democratic challenger Joe Biden won't carry rural America, "but polls leading to Election Day show that enthusiasm for the incumbent has waned compared to 2016. In a race where the margin of victory may be slim and turn on the result in just a handful of states, even a slight dip for either candidate in a core constituency can mean the difference between winning and losing."

Though the Trump administration has increased farm subsidies, farmers and rural areas were already hurting before the coronavirus pandemic or the trade war with China. Meanwhile, the pandemic is disproportionately hitting rural America right now, Dorning reports.

"That helps explain why Trump’s 28-percentage-point margin among rural voters in 2016 exit polls has shrunk to a 15-point lead (56% to 41%) among rural likely voters in a Survey USA poll taken Oct. 16-19, the most recent poll where the breakdown is available," Dorning reports. "His latest reading is also below the 20-point advantage in 2012 for Republican Mitt Romney, who lost his bid for the White House. Other polls have shown similar drops. The president’s job approval among rural and small-town residents dropped in a Gallup Poll Sept. 30-Oct. 15 to 55% from 62% as recently as May."

Trump won the election because he flipped swing voting districts in rural and blue-collar areas of swing states. "Any erosion of that rural base could prove particularly dangerous for Trump in the three battlegrounds he dramatically flipped in 2016 to secure an Electoral College triumph: Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania," Dorning reports. "With suburban voters in those states, which have been traditionally blue in presidential elections, turning back toward the Democrats, it’s all the more urgent for Trump to shore up his rural backing." Trump has spent considerable time lately campaigning in those areas and in Ohio and North Carolina, trying to fire up his rural base.