Poll: Rural Vote No Longer a Lock for Republicans

Analysis

Poll: Rural Vote No Longer a Lock for Republicans

by Howard Berkes

Morning Edition, June 11, 2007 · A new national poll indicates rural Americans are no longer reliably Republican, and the Bush administration's conduct of the war in Iraq seems mainly to blame.

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Concern over Iraq Cited

The poll was commissioned by the non-partisan Center for Rural Strategies, a Whitesburg, Ky., group trying to attract candidate attention to rural issues. Republican political consultant Bill Greener of Greener and Hook also participated in the design and analysis of the survey.

"Republicans are vastly underperforming among rural Americans," Greener said in response to the survey results. "And if we're going to succeed in 2008, we're going to have to do better."

Forty-six percent of the survey respondents indicated they'd vote for an un-named Democratic candidate for president if the election were held today; 43 percent favored a Republican. That's a statistical dead heat, given the poll's margin of error of plus or minus 3.46 percent.

The numbers reflect a plunge in Republican support among rural voters. Exit polls from the 2000 presidential election had Republican George Bush beating Democrat Al Gore by 22 per cent in rural areas. In 2004, the actual vote tally showed President Bush outpolling his Democratic challenger, Sen. John Kerry, by 19 percent among rural voters.

Concern about the war in Iraq seems to be the reason for the decline in Republican support, according to respondents in the new poll. Three-fourths of those surveyed know someone who is serving or has served in the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan.

"I don't like the way the war in Iraq is going as well as everybody else," says Judy VanAhlsen, a realtor in rural Jefferson, Iowa, who describes herself as a lifelong conservative Republican. "I think people are so disenchanted with the war, with Bush in general. I think people think anything is better — even Republicans (think that)."

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