General Discussion

"This divergence [white rural voters shifting Republican] made rural America less politically competitive, giving both parties little incentive to devote substantial resources to winning votes there. Yet it's only Democrats who are endlessly lectured about 'ignoring' rural America, and they do largely ignore it -- if all you're talking about is politics and not policy. ... What isn't widely understood is that Republicans ignore many rural areas, too, for essentially the same reason as Democrats: They know the races there won't be competitive, so they don't need to bother.

"'For the most part, Republicans rack up big margins in red areas by default,' says Wisconsin Democratic Party chair Ben Wikler. ... 'Candidate after candidate would tell me they were working their socks off and never seeing any evidence of a real campaign on the Republican side,' Wikler told us. 'And some of those candidates right before the election told me they were really confident they'd win, because their opponent had essentially done nothing, had barely filed any fundraising, had no field presence to speak of. And yet the Republicans would still win by these massive margins.'"

Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman, "White Rural Rage"