Two East Carolina University professors who have exhaustively examined county-level data are concluding that only gay marriage played a more significant role in voting patterns in rural counties than urban ones in 2004 when it came to support for George W. Bush.

One influential rural journalist who has reviewed the study, Bill Bishop, editor of the Center For Rural Strategy’s Daily Yonder Web site, speculates that the dominance of the cultural swing issue in the last election is informing GOP candidates’ on-the-ground campaigning in Iowa and other rural areas today as they fashion positions on family values issues but present little in the way of substantive economic plans for rural locales. Meanwhile, Iowa Independent’s own Dien Judge, this Web site’s chief agricultural and rural issues writer, has reported surprising little focus on farm and small-town development from candidates here.

(And they used to laugh at us on “The West Wing” as being easy marks, straw-chewing, tractor-driving mouth-breathers who would only look past the brim of our hats to check a candidate’s ethanol street cred.)

Apparently, advances in cellulosic ethanol and farm bill debate considered, we are more concerned in big sky country about whether the couple down the way is Jack and Bill – not Jack and Jill.  The Republicans knew this. It’s the gays, stupid.  The  Peter Francia and Jody Baumgartner East Carolina University study, “Victim or Victor of the Culture War? How Cultural Issues Affect Support for George W. Bush in Rural America” concludes:

It seems plainly evident that to understand why Bush was more popular among rural residents than urban residents the issue of gay marriage appears to have been a major factor.

In the 2004 American National Election Study, 74 percent of rural residents said gay marriage should not be allowed — compared with 58 percent in urban areas.  And this is vital as rural residents represented 57 percent of the Republican vote in 2004. Results of the East Carolina national study show that as the percentage of a county’s rural population increases so does the percentage of Bush vote.  Francia and Baumgartner studied data from from almost all 3,114 counties and election results from the 2004 election. So-called “serious” issues like tax cuts and the war in Iraq didn’t offer Bush any significant advantage in rural America, according to their reporting.  One of the reasons marriage plays more in rural America is most certainly because of religious trends (48 percent of rural residents say religion provides a great deal of guidance in every-day living, compared to 35 percent of urban residents). But there’s something even more simple at work here. Rural people are just more likely to be married. Far more likely. According to the 2004 National Election Study, only 8 percent of rural voters report never having been married, compared with 25 percent from urban areas.  The East Carolina professors say they wanted to add empirical evidence to a debate spawned by political observers like Thomas Frank.

In “What’s the Matter With Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America”  Frank explores one of the more counter-intuitive phenomenons in politics today: Why do working-class, rural people vote against their economic self-interests by electing conservative Republicans who advocate policies aimed at protecting the ownership class?

“Strip today’s Kansans of their job security, and they head out to become registered Republicans,” Frank writes. “Push them off their land, and next thing you know they’re protesting in front of abortion clinics … But ask them about the remedies their ancestors proposed (unions, anti-trust, public ownership), and you might as well be referring to the days when knighthood was in flower.”

A  recently published Iowa Independent.com piece examines how Frank's book plays out in the political machinations of U.S. Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, in the western part of this state.  With the East Carolina study, both Bishop and Francia see this data as a potential road map for the GOP in 2008. Here is what Bishop writes:

Of course, 2004 isn’t 2007 or 2008. But it may be that leading Republican candidates are pretending as if it is (and will be). No wonder Republican candidates mention rural issues less often in their debates. Maybe they figure that opposition to gay marriage IS a rural platform.  So, Giuliani has issued a position on marriage, but not farm policy, rural development or rural health care. (Giuliani has the ticklish problem of being against gay marriage, but FOR gay civil unions, a distinction that sets him apart from his opponents.) Romney has a position on “America’s culture and values,” but nothing particular for small towns.

(Romney recently said U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton was too liberal to be elected in France.)  Rural voters will decide what issues are most important to them. But if Republican candidates feel like the next election is a replay of ’04, expect a lot of talk about the sanctity of the family and less about bolstering rural hospitals.