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Photo: Jeff Storjohann, Carroll Daily Times Herald
In these increasingly anxious times, rural Americans won’t be as focused on the personality appeals that worked for George W. Bush in the last two elections, says an expert on rural voting patterns.
“The whole luxury of trying to find a president just like you may have worked under a certain circumstance,” Peter Francia, an East Carolina University political science professor, told the Iowa Independent.
But now is not one of those times, and this could have a major effect on the outcome of the presidential election.
Francia and his colleague Jody Baumgartner exhaustively examined county-level data and concluded that gay marriage had a significant impact on voting patterns in the presidential race in rural counties in 2004, when George W. Bush won reelection to the White House.
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. Rural voters 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.
For a time in the 2008 election cycle it appeared as if immigration might substitute for gay marriage as a wedge issue. We saw that at play in the GOP caucuses in Iowa as John McCain’s fortunes fell in large part because of his role in compromise legislation conservatives labeled as “amnesty” and defeated.
With voters already casting ballots in many states, the primary issue is the economy, and John McCain is going to have difficulty shuttling attention away from it as each day brings more distressing news about stock market and other economic factors.
“I think it’s going to be hard for the Republicans to shift the focus away from the economy,” Francia said. “Everything is going to be economy, economy, economy.”
Peter Francia
Francia predicts McCain will still win in rural America. The Center for Rural Strategies recently released a poll showing the Republican presidential ticket of John McCain and Sarah Palin picking up support over Democratic rivals Barack Obama and Joe Biden. But McCain has less of a lead this September than President George W. Bush did over John Kerry at around the same time in the 2004 election.
“The question is whether he wins rural American by a bigger margin than George W. Bush,” Francia said.
Francia said McCain is clearly going to continue attacking Barack Obama’s character, and going with the patriotism angle.
“That message plays well in rural America,” Francia said.
This cycle is challenging to compare to past ones because of the unprecedented strength of Obama’s grass-roots organizing and voter registration efforts.
There is still a “Bubba factor” in play. White working class/rural voters may not be fessing up to pollsters about the racism that will ultimately inform their votes in November, Francia said. But Obama may have the organization to counter that.
“We’ll have to see which way that tug of war (goes),” Francia said.
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