Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

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Rural Strategies is a non-partisan, non-profit group.  Their survey of 500 rural voters in six states shows a 13 points shift in the last month.  Democrats have made sharp gains in every state surveyed.   "This is not encouraging information for Republicans," says Bill Greener, the Republican political consultant who supervised and analyzed the bipartisan poll. "And I think that to pretend otherwise is not helpful." In many states, Democratic candidates detected opportunities here months ago.  In Missouri, Claire McCaskill kicked off her campaign not in Democratic strongholds in St. Louis and Kansas City, but with a prolonged tour of Missouri's rural areas -- areas that have voted strongly Republican in the last few elections.  NPR covered this story earlier today, and featured voters in Indiana's neck-and-neck 9th district, where several of the people interviewed -- people who had reflexively voted for Republicans in the past -- indicated they were pulling the lever for Democrats this year. The current congressional race and the new rural poll indicate an ongoing challenge for Republicans in southeastern Indiana, says political scientist Bill Kubik of Hanover College in Hanover, Ind. "This district is one that long-term is... perceived as moving in a Republican direction. So, the fact that it's backtracked in some ways really sends a message nationally that the Republican message is not resonating well in middle America." In many states, there has been a dichotomy between the rural areas and the more urban districts.  Nowhere is this more true  than in Missouri, a state that simultaneously produced Richard Gephardt and John Ashcroft.  The  south-central rural part of Missouri, home to Ashcroft and to Republican House leader Roy Blunt, has been a hotbed of evangelical voters.  But the poll seems to show that, even if these voters aren't exactly climbing on the Democratic bandwagon, they're much less excited about marching to the polls for the GOP. "Rural voters tend to be a core electorate for Republicans and they need their base voters to turn out and turn out big for them if they are going to stay in this race," Greenberg says.  She notes that the poll found Democrats more enthusiastic about supporting their candidates.  "The fact that rural voters are trending Democrat and we're seeing less enthusiasm among Republicans in rural areas is not good news for Republicans."

Any way you look at it, the poll shows real movement among rural voters, and that movement is happening now.  Rather than "coming home ro Republicans" as many pundits had predicted over the last few weeks, the final phase of the election is seeing rural voters running away from a Republican Party that's more and more out of tune with their concerns.
 
The study results from the Center for Rural Strategies can be found here. There's enough information in the raw data, covering everything from religious leanings to voting history, that statisticians can mine this data for weeks.

If the rural voters are moving toward the Democrats, who is left to the Republicans? Well, it's not the middle class. A new AP poll shows that middle class voters are turning their backs on the GOP.

The AP-AOL News telephone poll of 2,000 adults, 970 of whom are likely voters, was conducted by Ipsos from Oct. 20-25. In it, 56 percent of likely voters said they would vote to send a Democrat to the House and 37 percent said they would vote Republican - a 19-point difference. Democrats had a 10-point edge in early October.

What's the result of rural voters and middle class voters running from the GOP?

The 2006 election is shaping up to be a repeat of 1994. This time, Democrats are favored to sweep Republicans from power in the House after a dozen years of GOP rule.

Anyone thinking that Democrats might have "peaked" too soon, had better think again. The wave isn't shrinking, it's still building.