For some reason David posted this on his other blog rather than here . . .
David writes,
We can see a steady decline of Republican support among rural poor voters starting in 1972. Even with a big jump in 2000, support for the Republican presidential candidate was less than 50 percent. So, Obama, it looks like poor rural Americans have no problem voting for Democrats.
I’m not quite sure why 2004 isn’t included here too, but in any case, the sample size of rural voters is pretty small in each year, so you don’t want to over-interpret the jumps from year to year.
The correlation is certainly there, however the reason why rural voters moved from Republican to Democrats should also be noted, especially when asking the question of whether they are prepared to vote for Barak.
In the political history of the US, parties have changed their platforms and beliefs for various reasons making the term Democrat and Republican indefinable unless you also use timeframe as a context.
The Republicans in Congress, with the help of a Democratic President passed the Civil Rights Amendment. The Republican rural voters then defected from the Republicans for pushing the Amendment at all and moved to the Democrat party were many have remained to this day.
It's democratic party, not democrat party. But I think from context I can glean that you knew that.
I WOULD like to see 2004 on there. I suspect the 'gap' is an artifact of the clinton years and wasn't repeated in 2004.