… Republicans have long courted rural voters. Democrats need to do a better job at that. To win in 2020, the eventual Democratic nominee needs to increase the Democrats’ share of rural votes and not cede them to Republicans.
This is within reach. From 2012 to 2016, Democrats lost 11 percentage points in rural areas overall. But those same rural areas trended in a Democratic direction from 2016 to 2018 and ended up about six points more Democratic. There’s room for growth in rural America for Democrats.
First of all, “rural” means the least populated parts of the country; it is not code for white. Nor for Trump die-hards. There are about 10 million rural people of color; that’s one out of every five rural residents. CONT.
LaTosha Brown, New York Times