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Subscribe to RSSOne remarkable aspect of the 2008 Obama campaign was its success in carrying rural counties in battleground states such as Colorado and Iowa, the same counties which Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry had lost four years earlier.
Evan Vucci / AP
President Barack Obama steps off Air Force One May 2 at Andrews Air Force Base, Md.
Whether Obama’s field organizers can repeat their 2008 success with rural voters this year depends on both symbolism and substance.
Political analyst Charlie Cook said last week on MSNBC that this year Obama has a problem in places such as Iowa. In “states with a large small-town, rural populations ... the president's had a really, really hard time.” And according to the most recent Des Moines Register poll in February, 48 percent of Iowans surveyed disapproved of his job performance, while 46 percent approved.
Carolyn Kaster / AP file
President Obama greets supporters at a campaign event last week at the University of Iowa. He won Iowa with 54 percent of the vote in 2008.
One Obama administration decision which Republicans portrayed as a sign that the president is tone deaf when it comes to rural voters was last December’s proposed regulation from the Department of Labor that would have banned people under age 18 from being near certain farm animals and operating certain kinds of farm machinery.
Last week ago, after months of pressure from farmers’ groups and members of Congress, the administration withdrew the proposed rule. Even liberal Democrats such as Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota welcomed the decision to kill the regulation. “While they may have been well-intentioned, these rules would have had a negative impact on our state’s ag community,” he said.
Andrea Mitchell talks with Stephanie Cutter, Team Obama's Deputy Campaign Manager, about the Obama campaign's video touting the president's successful operation against bin Laden one year ago, and the criticism the campaign is facing because of it.
The economy seems likely to be the driving factor just as much for rural voters on Election Day as for those in bigger cities, like Las Vegas or Denver. And this will make Obama’s 2008 success in wooing rural voters harder to replicate this year.
According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics the average unemployment rate in smaller counties – those with less than the average size labor force – is 8.7 percent, compared to the national average of 8.2 percent.
About 30 percent of the nation’s more than 3,000 counties still have an unemployment rate of 10 percent or higher and 162 of those are smaller rural counties in states such as North Carolina, Wisconsin, Michigan, Colorado, and Ohio which are likely to be hotly contested this fall.
Fifty of the highest unemployment, rural counties are in North Carolina. Obama carried 15 of those North Carolina counties in 2008 and came within a whisker of carrying four more of them.
Obama carried North Carolina in 2008 by 14,000 votes – his smallest margin of victory in any state, and the Democrats are holding their convention there this September. In the most recent Elon University poll in North Carolina, 49 percent of voters disapproved of Obama’s job performance while 43 percent approved.
Although President Obama said there hasn't been excessive celebration at the White House on the first anniversary of the death of Osama bin Laden, his re-election team isn't shying away from making the raid a centerpiece of the campaign. Former Sen. Tom Daschle discusses.
Traditionally the formula for victory for Democratic presidential candidates has been to rely on heavy turnout in the party’s big city bastions and then to add enough suburban voters to carry toss-up states such as Ohio, Missouri, and Florida. The larger the rural population of a state, the harder that strategy was to pull off since rural America generally favors Republican presidential candidates.
But in 2008 the Obama campaign’s effort to increase rural turnout paid off in states such as Iowa. In 2004 George W. Bush had carried the state. But in 2008, in Iowa’s rural counties, defined as those in which the total number of votes cast was less than statewide average per county, Obama won 49 percent of the vote, edging his Republican rival John McCain by two percentage points.
In those same counties in 2004, John Kerry won 10 percent fewer votes than Obama and won only 44 percent of the total rural vote.
In two-thirds of those Iowa rural counties, total voter turnout in 2008 was in fact smaller than in 2004, with only the Democratic voter turnout going up – indicating a demoralized Republican base.
In Iowa’s bigger urban counties, Obama’s share of the vote, 56 percent, was bigger than in rural Iowa, but Obama’s success in rural counties helped give him a nine-point margin of victory in the state.
On Wednesday, Iowa Republicans pointed to new voter registration data showing that they increased their voter registration edge last month. In March Republican registration exceeded Democratic registration for the first time since 2006 and the GOP now holds a lead of over 8,000 registered voters in the state.
In another battleground state, Colorado, in 2008 Obama won 46 percent of the vote in rural counties, compared to Kerry who won 41 percent of Colorado’s rural vote. Obama won 23 percent more votes in Colorado’s rural counties than Kerry had won in 2004, helping boost Obama to a 215,000 plurality statewide.
“Republicans have a very real opportunity to win in battleground states like Colorado and Iowa this November,” said Republican National Committee press secretary Kirsten Kukowski. “We already have aggressive ground operations in place to make new voter contacts and continue registering voters in key battleground states. Things like our Social Victory Center [a new Facebook app] will make it easier for all voters, including rural voters, to help elect a Republican to the White House.”
In 2008, Obama’s novelty and his appeal to voters’ idealism were factors that seemed to work as well in some parts of rural America as in suburbia and cities.
For example, in Indiana’s largely rural Third congressional district, with many Amish, Mennonites and evangelical Christians, Bush had gotten 68 percent of the vote in 2004, but John McCain managed only got 56 percent in 2008, as some conservative voters opted for Obama.
In an interview in 2009, then-Rep. Mark Souder, a conservative Republican who’d represented the district for 14 years, said that in 2008 Obama had “represented an element of the evangelical Christian dream, an African-American who has made it up through our system and proved we aren’t a prejudiced country because he made it…. There was a desire – not ideological – to vote for him.”
The big reversal came two years later. Take, for example, Virginia’s Fifth congressional district which includes Charlottesville, home of the University of Virginia, but also many rural counties.
Obama nearly carried that district in 2008 and Democrat Tom Perriello won the House seat there, but in 2010 voters turned against them, ousting Perriello despite a last-minute campaign visit from Obama. Perriello had voted for Obama’s health care plan.
Obama’s field operation in that part of Virginia in 2008 “had an enormous impact -- there were many counties in my district that had not seen a Democratic field office in years and in some case they had two or three offices,” said Perriello, who is now president of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, a Democratic advocacy group. “So you saw a tremendous grassroots presence and they were able to find those voters who wanted to support the president and get them there. But I also think it made a statement to independent voters that this was someone who cared enough to show up.”
This year, Perriello said “the conversation about economic fairness is one that resonates deeply in rural communities and puts conservatives on defense. A lot of people in rural counties work hard and play by the rules but feel like the system is rigged against working middle-class folks.”
He added that “there’s also a lot of disillusionment with both parties from rural communities and I think to some extent that’s going to be a challenge for both sides -- how disgusted people are with politics.”
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The only Hope & Change we got was a 6 trillion dollar man, Osama Bin Laden, I guess that is how much it took to assassinate him, other than that what have we got?
I mandatory Obummer care, which everyone thought was going to given to everyone for FREE! L.O.L.
May I suggest that all of you check out Cable News Ratings and see who scores highest. It's Fox News in every time slot.
Glo> And CNN just "enjoyed" its lowest ratings in more than a decade. Thanks in no small part to their newest Brit of the Hour.............
Variety shows always do better in ratings than actual news programs glo. You should know that.
Obama/Biden 2012!
....but they are the ONLY right wing news channel. They're competing against the "liberal mainstream" media, which according to Fox is EVERYONE ELSE.
Sooooo......add up the numbers for CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NBC, and PBS and compare the combined numbers against FOX.
Let me know how that works our for you. lol.
The media won't say the race for the presidency is over and Obama is out in November. They want to savor the last months of this socialist society. The facts about how much Obama is in trouble will dribble out in the next 6 months. There has been news reports over the past few weeks of him being in trouble with the retired group, religions and now a story that at least half of new college graduates are either unemployed or underemployed. He can't be popular with the medical community and when has there been as many stories of military personal protesting his war time policies? This guy is a 1 termer.
Yes. It's a vast left wing conspiracy that includes EVERY SINGLE NEWS ORGANIZATION/NEWSPAPER/MAGAZINE IN AMERICA except FOX, Every single college professor and every single public school teacher in America.
You should hide in your basement with your guns.
If it weren’t for the disproportionate negative affect it would have on the black community, I would love to see the republican party continue to decimate the ignorant racist white middle class and the pathetic rural whites whom their policies will have a dramatic negative impact . Any moron can see that the plans that they have will continue to benefit the wealthy with massive tax cuts while continuing to burden the middle class with a disproportionate amount of their income to fund the state and federal agencies. What’s wrong with you idiots? Are you going to let your bigotry doom you and your children and grandchildren to a future of poverty and struggle? Reagan dupe all of you, and now, these current republicans are going finish you off…how efin dumb can you be?
We know enough to realize that spending is not the way to prosperity by the government and hand-outs are at all time high. Dependency on the government to survive will be the end of mankind...hard work is the only think that got this country to where it is...not the government dole brigade
Black - And the most negative, non-productive, non-contributing, most burdensome race is heard from. Never in the history of the world have you EVER had a successful nation, country, village, city, town, neighborhood or even a street for that matter. You don't have a right to badmouth anyone or anything. You burden society with generation after generation of criminals, gangs and welfare recipients. You always have a disproportionate percentage of fatherless children - unwed mothers - felons - non high school graduates - and welfare recipients - No - you need to STFU about anything and everything.
yea, the slaves and other minorities built this country for centuries...for free...right?
NO not for centuries...the slaves OWN people sold them out in Africa, read your history.
Don't try to lump other minorities in with trash like yourself. They can speak for themselves.
Well first of all the operating of hevey equipment can be a dangerous thing Dee patriot and I don't think that was something you can look at as a big issue!!! The staying away from the certain type of animals well that's a different sttory because most young men and women who grow up on a farm are going to inherit tht skill from there family that will past on from generation til generation so he was wrong with that part!!!
Job numbers snob numbers,,,,there is no net job gain in this country..manufactured numbers by the government to try and make citizens think everything is just rosy.
I though he hated rural people that cling to their guns and bibles.
The consensus of opinion by the left keep spending it will save us...rural people in general are hard working and got any sucess by working hard and now the left's idea is class warfare...won't fly with most.
Hey Joe better get to Flordia and Ohio to help BO out not looking to good for him in those 2 states early on Romeny wins them game set match
The overwhelming majority of voters arnet rural
You must look at the Electoral Map - not just the populous vote.
Did they say he has a "tough ho to row" Is that in regards to Michelle!!
It is if your wife's name is Michelle. Am I correct Zman? Is your wife's name Michelle?
Obama/Biden 2012!
Duh. All the hillbillies live in rural areas.
Obama carried every large urban county in Texas except one (Tarrant/Ft. Worth) in 2008.
Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Austin, and El Paso were all blue in 2008, but McCain got the trailer park vote. There's a lot of them.
Then you f-ing idiot get the hell out of this country. It seems ever you are retarded or Un American? Either way you resemble Obama.
paul ryan is a pimp...guess what that makes you. i want one of you clowns to explain his budget and how it's any different from what got us into this mess...you can't. your just a bunch of ignorant racist!!! socialist...muslim...not an american, no wonder china is kickin our @$$!!!!
If you study Germany, their budget is based on a similiar ryan budget, they are the only country in Europe doing well. Austerity cannot be reached by government over spending.
Obama will get biyatch slapped in November. And he will deserve every part of it.
Does Faux News pay you all to spew your hate on here,or are you all just so p-ssed off that you're going to lose the election that you just have to make everyone else miserable like all you Repukes.
Stuart> With all the name calling and the like one has to wonder just who it is who is pi**ed off. Fox News, incidentally, is the highest rated of the news outlets. By far. Not even close as to anyone else. But DO be well and have a nice day.
Great post!!
Again, you have to compare FOX against the combined numbers of ALL THE LEFTWING LIBERAL MAINSTREAM MEDIA, CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS.
You lose.
Tough sledding for Mr. Obama where I come from. Here, he's perceived as:
I'm not saying any or all of these are correct or true, merely what I hear when I keep my ears open at the local breakfast joint. No one is cutting him a break, or willing to "give him a chance", which is what I heard a lot of in '08.
He did pretty well here last time due to white guilt, but that's worn off. Now he has to stand on his merit, and not on being a novelty.
At least in this jerkwater town, he's going down in flames in Nov. I have no idea whether that's good or bad, as Romney is just another train wreck waiting to happen. At least with this cat he's the devil you know.
You forgot:
Black
He's going down ...period. Too many negative factors that Romney can use in his favor. The list is too long for me to go through it.But only an idiot would vote for a guy again after such a misberable 4 years!
Sam, I don't necessarily think that's so. Oddly enough, I think a lot of white voters (especially in rural areas) were inclined to vote for him in '08 simply BECAUSE he's black, and that gave them an opportunity to prove (if only to themselves) that they weren't racist.
Frankly, I think they're more colorblind now than they were, and that may ultimately be to his detriment. Now they just see him as "that guy" they don't like. Keep in mind I'm only talking about the average joes I hear, not the genuine haters. They've only ever had ugly things to say about the man.
Don't cry lefties ... he still has a shot with the welfare folks in the cities!! (Detroit, Harlem, Watts,) And since he's been in office that number has gotten bigger and bigger!! Of course there may be some of those welfare folks that actually want to work and since the unemployment is heading back up to 10% .... he'll lose those people.
At this point, Obama will only do well with the liberal elites who will support him no matter what and the people who want "free" stuff (unfortunately this group has been getting larger and larger over the years, very sad). We trending towards an entitlement society and unfortunately people will be wanting more and more handouts. There are many of them now and they will be voting for Obama.
Obama is already toast. People are completely sick of this. The unemployment numbers are only a function of the number of people who have stopped looking for work. Worse yet, the jobs people are going back to are awful. I live in a reasonably prosperous city and everybody is working a part-time job and a full-time job just to get by.
Most people know that George Bush wasn't the greatest president, but to elect a guy just because he claims to be better than Bush is just plain stupid. ($6 trillion in debt says Obama is less competent than Bush).
Rural America is traditionally Republican and will go back to that in this election.
Just like electing Mutt who claims to be better, right?
I travel for work allot out west like Illinois, Ohio, and I am from Pennsylvania. I don't know many people that like Obama at all. Some long time Democrats will vote for him in Pennsylvania and other places because there are many idiots out there but other than that I don't see him winning. It will be close however because the Republicans only have Romney and they will vote for him because anything is better than socialism and he is the worse of two evils.
so you will gladly give away your medicare and possibly your social security to support romney and the gop-why??
Because I am not a socialist and don't like what Obama is doing at all. His Obama care is taking 500 billion from medicare to begin with. You have to listen to other people instead of that guy on HBO or the news. Watch Bill O Reilly or Sean Hannity sometimes. Granted Hannity is a little over board and never agrees with Obama but he does have some good facts. O Reilly likes some about Obama but is more nuetral. You have to stop watching the regular news because they are all Obama. For instance Obamas wife, 500,000 for a vacation to Paris with her friends on the tax payers dollar while times are bad for most people in the United States. That is a fact by the way!
Greg, I don't predict a close election. Republicans and Democrats will vote their own parties, no doubt about that. But the Independents, the group that will ultimately decide the election, are moving towards Romney. The polls show Romney with a 13% lead over Independents and this is just the beginning of the General Election. I would also watch the young vote closely (the group Obama has been desperately trying to appeal to), 1 in every 2 College graduates can not get a job. This group will either stay home or vote for the other candidate out of frustration. Not looking too good for Obama to me.
You are probably right! Independents voted Obama last time but not this time. Some Democrats wont vote Obama either but they do not like Romney so probably wont go to the booths this time around.
yeah the farmers always vote gop even though romney or bush for that matter would ever lower thereselves to do any farming well i guess obama and michelle would never either so see there point the thing is the good old usa through gop administrations and there hold of congress has made us a farming state and have did so on purpose by the out sourcing thing-they knew very well they could kill there biggest rivals by killing manufacturing jobs but shipping them to china yet protect farmers oil and other industries much more friendly to the gop, good job on there part now you even have union killers like walker in wisconsin, kasick in ohio and the governor in indiana (cant think of him) making there states basically right to work states and killing all unions and making there states very red states smart on there part and face it globally we can always export food us and russia are the best at it-trouble is a few farmers cant support an economy or military like an industrial nation like china can someday i hope the gop recognises this and dont continue to destroy america for political gain but i doubt it
Right to work does not eliminate unions, it does give the right to not be in a union and for an employer to not have a union shop. It works great in Texas...ie Paccar...Petebilt trucks.
notatroll, I'll just bet that your thumbs are sore after typing that!
doesnt texas have the most minimun wage jobs and below and is one of the poorest states because of it? do you want america to become like texas? are you happy there knowing most are barely getting by ? maybe you are and maybe your right thats the way we need to go-im all ears I admit i could be wrong about all this maybe us over paid workers (im an engineer) are the true ones holding everyone back like the gop has said all along-if you folks in texas are happy maybe i am wrong-want to know??
Not Troll - Texas does have the most minimum wage jobs right along with the most illegal aliens - coming your way soon. But Texas is far from being the poorest state. Texas was the state most unaffected by obama idiocy. We didn't loose jobs at the rate of other states. Texas ranks 25th in income.
Texas has a lot mfg jobs that pay union rates but don't give in to the union criteria of dues and madness. Petebilt is prime example, was union in Tn but stuck for 2 years...they closed it, they pay all union wages in Tx.
Texas did well when everyone else was sucking hind teat. High tech is growing well esp in Austin, many are relocating from Ca to Austin.
Are these the same rural voters who sunbathe on dirt roads in traffic?
Is that supposed to be funny??? How old are you .... 12?
LMAO
How old are you Zman? Better yet, how old is your wife Michelle?
She told me she was "ffdyt sven". Her mouth was full.
Nope not 12. Voter age. Sucks, huh?
Obama/Biden 2012
What can you say. People are different. Some people worship ted nugent. The guy who sets food scraps out at a public park so that he can shoot at the bears that show up. Some people think that's great. That bears should be shot like that. Some just wounded. Some killed. That the fine of $10K is worth it. That shooting bears is what guns are for. That no matter what nugent did, he believes in the bible so he will be saved.
Others say what nugent did is abhorrent. These are city folk who are not allowed to carry guns hardly anywhere. They love the bears in alaska. Specially the polar bears. Shooting bears in public parks just isn't right they will tell you. That $10K was way to small a fine and that nugent should have all of his guns taken away from him. That criminals who use guns in their crimes should not be allowed to have any guns. I tell you there are all sorts of people.
Obama and his elitist cronies don't give a Rats A$$ about rural voters (The fly over country rabble) except at election time.
Flush twice this November. Just to be sure its gone.
right. Romney and his down-to-earth, salt of the earth, hard-scrabble, trust fund babies care so much about those "little people", especially the ones who stash their money in Swiss bank accounts and offshore accounts.
Sam, Enough with this stereotype of wealthy people. All I care about and most people care about is that Romney is the one with the solutions to get us out of this mess we are in. Obama has proven to be cluessless to know anything about the economy and how it works and people are getting fed up.
Deport, blacks haven't placed innocent women and children in gas chambers and then burned them in ovens. millions of innocent people, and, caused the deaths of millions more...you have be proud to be white!!! HEIL HITLER!!!!
No .. the black folks take automatic weapons and kill about 20 -30 people in their neighborhood daily!!
You idiot. Look at African history - you kill each other by the 10's of millions throughout history and are still hard at it today. And you think long and hard about exactly who defeated Germany booger.
20-30? George Bush killed that many Iraqis in a couple of minutes.
taliban
That's because Blacks haven't invented gas chambers and ovens yet. Hell, the ones in Africa are still struggling with the wheel and fire.
Sam
Bush saved countless thousands of people in Iraq by taking out Sadam, who was using WMD against his own people.
He killed more than he saved.
I'm pretty sure that the Germans didn't invent gas chambers or ovens either. They just used them.
Is it any wonder why rural America doesn't vote democrat? Many of the democrat policies harm the economies of rural America and harms t middle class working families. On top of that, many are social conservatives as well.
so you think the middle class is in the gop camp-that surprises me, i thought they would be dem-I guess it depends on what you call middle class-thanks to the gop its probably now lawyers doctors small business owners no one who works for anyone else anymore like it used to be as we have shipped most of our jobs over seas and continue to do so, so i guess you are correct the gop does support non-workers much more than dems by far-something the dems must consider in future elections- we are supporting the poor now not the middle class
Obama is going to have a problem with anyone who isn't dumb or to lazy to take care of themselves.
oh really I would like a poll on who has a college degree and who doesnt and how they vote, i will admit mitt did well with the smarter ones in the primary but would like to know how it is nation wide, i guess your post is probably right with most white males voting gop, we are the most educated because we are the most well off so I cave you win on this one
Most of the college students are liberals because that is what is being taught in college and the fact they havent worked a day in there lives. I am ashamed but my daughter is a socialist and her fiance wants socialism. They just got there first jobs and make a combined income of 145,000 a year. Wait till they see all the taxes coming out and finally realize they are tired of paying for welfare people to drive fancy cars and have goverment paid cell phones.