To those who keep claiming that it's pointless looking for votes in rural America... [View all]
...and that the voters there are all racist, pro-Trump, bible-thumpers....
Read the following from the Rural Democracy Initiative.
https://ruraldemocracyinitiative.org/sites/default/files/articles/Investing%20in%20Rural%20and%20Small-Town%20Voters%20-%20RDI%20Report.pdf
RST voters are, contrary to conventional wisdom, among the swingiest voters there are among different demographic groups. They voted for Obama in the 40s, then plummeted to 32% for Hillary. They then went up 6% in 2018 before settling midway between that number and the 2016 percentage in 2020.
The raw Senate representation numbers make an even stronger case for investing in rural and small-town voters. More and more of our nation's population are moving into big metro areas and the biggest states. Already, more than half of the population lives in just nine states. That means less than half of our population is represented in the Senate by 82 senators.
Because of rising Latino population numbers and other recently naturalized immigrants, many states with large rural/small town populations are becoming more ethnically diverse, with urban areas in those states also growing, and that is going to change their politics over the next decade if we make the needed investments. Texas is now over 50% people of color, and elections there will continue to get closer if we invest in outreach strategies to the heavily Latino counties in rural South Texas and largely un-organized Black communities in East Texas. Georgia and Mississippi are now more than 40% people of color, with North Carolina only a little behind at 37% and South Carolina at 35%. Even historically heavily White and Republican Midwestern states like Kansas and Nebraska are now over 21% people of color, with that percentage growing steadily year after year.
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