I’m responsible for getting “traditionally under served” democrats and every other democrat in rural Minnesota’s 7th congressional district out to vote. Conventional wisdom is that Hillary should make my job easy, as women flock to the polls to put one of their own into the White House. That’s why up ‘til about a week ago I sheepled along with the default Hillary candidacy.

Then I started digging into the crosstabs of some polls where they broke out results by urban and rural geography. I started doing this a couple years back, and those rural results in the crosstabs gave me advance warning of our 2014 electoral debacle. So when SurveyUSA polled Minnesota a couple months back, I took note of Hillary’s losing to Trump 42% to 45% statewide, 35% to 42% in western Minnesota, and getting crushed 26% to 60% in southern Minnesota. 35% is around the share of the votes most of our democratic candidates got in 2014 in my southwest Minnesota district… Are we in for a repeat of that disaster for rural democrats? But noting the number of respondents for those western and southern parts of the state was less than 100, I took the results with a few pounds of salt.

Then a couple weeks ago the Strib popped their latest Minnesota poll, testing both Hillary and Bernie against Trump. The Strib’s methodology divided Minnesota into largely urban Hennepin and Ramsey counties containing Minneapolis and St.Paul, the surrounding suburban counties, and the mostly rural rest of Minnesota… Giving many more respondents in each area of the state and lower margins of error and more accuracy. Hillary beat Trump statewide 43% to 38% by winning big in the urban areas, but lost to Trump 38% to 43% in the suburbs and 35% to 40% in the rural rest of Minnesota… Again, Hillary is bumping into that 35% “ceiling” for democrats in rural Minnesota. Not very encouraging, especially when you’re trying to recruit down ballot candidates to run with Hillary.

But Bernie’s polling performance knocked “conventional wisdom” on it’s ass, then kicked it right out the campaign office door- He beat Trump 53% to 37% statewide, 64% to 30% in the urban counties, lost 43% to 47% in the ‘burbs, and won the rural west of Minnesota 51% to 36%. To recap, Bernie is the choice of 10% more voters than Hillary statewide, 7% more voters in the urban areas, 5% more voters in the suburbs, and an incredible 16% more voters in the rural rest of Minnesota! Which candidate would you rather have at the top of the ballot?

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