Republican Grip on Rural America in Doubt for '08

http://www.cqpolitics.com/2007/06/rural_america_appears_less_viv.html

Republican Grip on Rural America in Doubt for '08
By Greg Giroux


Although the 2004 presidential election was relatively close, those color-coded maps of voter preference showed most of the nation as a sea of Republican “red” — a graphic representation of President George W. Bush’s dominance in the sprawling but sparsely populated rural areas of the United States.

That was then. But in the past three years, Bush’s standing in rural America has slipped — raising questions whether the 2008 nominee of his Republican Party will be able to repeat the dominance Bush enjoyed in those regions in his 2000 and 2004 presidential victories.

If next year’s Democratic nominee were able to make inroads in normally conservative-leaning rural areas, it would seriously compromise the Republican Party’s efforts to win a third consecutive presidential election — and hinder its attempts to reclaim control of one or both chambers of Congress, which the GOP lost in a 2006 electoral debacle.

The possibility that rural America could be a battleground sector in the 2008 election was a major finding of a bipartisan poll sponsored by the Center for Rural Strategies and conducted recently by the Democratic polling firm Greenberg Quinlan Rosner in consultation with the Republican media firm Greener and Hook.

The survey’s good news for Democrats included a finding that 52 percent of rural respondents disapprove of President Bush’s job performance, compared with 44 percent who approve.

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As such, it deserves a bit more time up near the top, I think.

:kick:

are finally waking up to the fact that the GOP has used them for the past 30 years to vote against their economic best interests.