President Bush leads Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., the presumed Democratic presidential nominee, by 9 points (51 percent to 42 percent) in the rural areas of 17 "battleground" states including Minnesota and Wisconsin, but that percentage is lower than the vote Bush received in those counties in 2000 and probably not enough to assure him of victory in those states according to a recent poll released by the Center for Rural Strategies, a Whitesburg, Ky.-based organization.
The poll points to an often unrecognized factor in American politics: Republicans almost always win the presidential contest in the Plains such as North Dakota and South Dakota and the Deep South states, but the rural vote matters much more in states that are only partly rural. This year, pollsters say Bush is almost certain to win the Plains and the South while Kerry will win in California and the Northeast, but that there are 17 "battleground" states in which the outcome is uncertain. Those states are Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New Mexico, New Hampshire, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Washington, West Virginia and Wisconsin.
The poll registered the views of rural voters in those 17 states. It was funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and conducted by Greenberg, Quinlan Rosner, a Democratic polling firm, and Greener and Hook, a Republican firm, between June 14 and 20 of 536 likely voters, with a 4.4 percent margin of error.
The Austin (Texas) American-Statesman said in a June 28 story that its analysis of the 2000 vote showed that Bush beat Gore by 11 points (53 percent to 42 percent) in rural counties in the 17 states covered by the poll and that in urban counties in the same 17 states, Bush received only 46.4 percent of the vote, and Gore got 50 percent.
In these states, Kerry is likely to get most of the urban vote in 2004 and Bush needs a high rural vote to make up for losses in the urban areas. Political strategists have long said that rural Americans are torn between Republicans and Democrats because rural Americans tend to agree with the Republican Party on cultural conservative on issues such as abortion, gay rights and gun control, but they also are lower in income than urban and suburban Americans and therefore agree with Democrats on issues such as Social Security, farm subsidies and grants for waters and sewers and economic development.
The importance of the rural vote was highlighted over the July 4 weekend when Kerry toured the rural areas of three battleground states - Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa. Campaigning July 2 in Cloquet, Minn., Kerry said, "Don't tell us losing 1,300 dairy farms in Minnesota is the best we can do. We have the best family farmers in America, but we're denying you the fair chance to compete in the global marketplace."
At his campaign stops, Kerry and his staff also praised ethanol production and said he would limit packing companies from owning livestock shortly before slaughter and would implement the mandatory country-of-origin labeling for red meat, fresh vegetables and fish that was included in the 2002 farm bill but which has been stopped by the Republicans from going forward.
The Bush campaign responded quickly that rural Americans should not trust Kerry because he voted for the Northeast Dairy Compact that Midwesterners opposed; has voted against repeal of the estate tax, which the Bush campaign calls the "death" tax; hasn't been supportive enough of rural health care; and didn't vote on the energy bill.
But cultural issues may play a big role in the campaign. Bill Greener, the Republican pollster, said that the poll showed "some modest lessening" of strength for Bush in the rural areas of swing states. Greener noted that Bush also would be likely to get some of the 7 percent of voters who told the pollsters they were undecided or leaned toward other candidates, but he said that cultural issues that helped Bush with rural Americans probably would not be as helpful in 2004.
Noting that polls found people who attended church regularly and owned guns were the most likely to vote for Bush in 2000, Greener said he does not believe those factors would be as "predictive" of a pro-Bush vote this year. "It's a confluence of factors," Greener said. "Kerry is bending over backwards," to get hunters' votes, he said, pointing out that Kerry frequently has been photographed hunting. Greener also said that the issues of "economy/jobs and national defense, place in the world," would have more "saliency" with rural voters in 2004 than they did in 2000.
But the poll also showed that, despite Kerry's statements on agriculture and his frequently photographed hunting expeditions, Kerry has a lot of work to do in rural America to woo voters. Fifty-two percent of rural voters told the pollsters they had "warm" feelings about Bush while only 35 percent had "warm" feelings about Kerry.
The poll had one major failing: It did not differentiate the views of rural Americans on the single issue that other polls say may determine the election in November: the Iraq war. As the war goes, so may the votes of rural Americans, like most Americans.Agweek:
