Rural Voters Poll: Comments from the Center for Rural Strategies

Last Sunday, I wrote about a Center for Rural Strategies Poll or rural voters showing a trend towards the Democrats.

I was shocked and flattered to get e-mail from Tim Marema, Vice President for the Center for Rural Strategies. We had an exchange of messages and he elaborated on the poll's findings.

Here are a couple thoughts:

About the war: One of the things we found in the poll is that 73 percent of the rural respondents knew someone who has served in the military in Iraq or Afghanistan. We don't have a way to compare that directly to metro areas, but that seems like a large percentage and it would support the notion that wars come home to rural areas in very personal ways.

Second, don't sell the impact of the rural vote short. While the number of rural voters is about 20 percent of the national electorate, you can make the case that rural voters in Ohio determined the outcome of the 2004 presidential election. Rural voters in Ohio broke 64-36 for Bush, helping him overcome the increased turnout in urban areas that favored Kerry.

I also asked him about my assertion that in a very noisy (that is to say overwhelming ly negative, misinformation-fille) advertising environment that voters will swing back to their mean behavior. Here is his response:

In 2004 Kerry was far more competitive in rural battleground in June than he was in September and October. So there's a case to be made that the rural vote will swing Republican in the remaining weeks, as you say. Our Republican advisor, Bill Greener, says he thinks the GOP numbers are about where they should be, given that these are competitive districts and not walkaways. And they hold up well with congressional preferences from our 2004 poll. He thinks the GOP will open a lead before the election.

Our Democratic advisor, Anna Greenberg, says the apt comparison from 2006 is to 2002 off year, when the GOP had a substantial lead among rural voters in the congressional races (instead of dead even, like we found last week). If that's the comparison to make, then rural is currently more Democratic than you would expect.

We will do another poll in late October and I'll add you to the list to get a notice when it's out. That poll will sample the same states and districts. Therefore we should be able to observe whether there is a swing and if so how much. My hunch is that will say a lot about the outcome of the election.

I'm looking forward to that second poll and will publish the results as soon as they become avialable. Big, big ups to Tim Marema for having his blogger tracking radar on and engaging with C-list bloggers like me.