{"id":15912,"date":"2019-03-31T21:34:54","date_gmt":"2019-03-31T21:34:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=15912"},"modified":"2019-04-01T00:26:30","modified_gmt":"2019-04-01T00:26:30","slug":"what-happens-to-rural-and-small-town-trump-voters-after-trump-is-gone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/what-happens-to-rural-and-small-town-trump-voters-after-trump-is-gone\/","title":{"rendered":"What happens to rural and small-town Trump voters after Trump is gone?"},"content":{"rendered":"

J. Edwin Benton<\/a>, University of South Florida<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

If one word can capture the sentiment of rural and small-town dwellers in recent years, it is \u201cresentment<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

I am a scholar who studies politics at the state and local level<\/a>. Residents of rural and small-town communities believe they are not getting their fair share of government attention and vital resources compared to urban dwellers. They believe that America is moving away from them.<\/p>\n

As the 2020 presidential campaign gears up, these resentful Americans will play a key role. How strong supporters of Donald Trump in the 2016 election<\/a> vote in 2020 will depend on whether the president has delivered on the promises he made to help them out.<\/p>\n

Will this growing divide affect American politics beyond Trump?<\/p>\n

Left behind<\/h2>\n

Political scientist Katherine Cramer has spent over a decade doing field work<\/a> in 27 small Wisconsin towns to understand how people use social class identity to interpret politics<\/a>. Cramer found that people in these rural areas feel as though they are being ignored<\/a> by urban elites and urban institutions like government and the media at a time when they are struggling to make ends meet.<\/p>\n

They believe their communities are dying, the economy is leaving them behind, and that young people, money and their livelihoods<\/a> are going somewhere else.<\/p>\n

They think that major decisions affecting their lives are being made far away in big cities<\/a>. And perhaps most importantly, they feel that no one is listening to them or their ideas about things that are important to them.<\/p>\n

Most distressing to those living in this situation is the belief that no one, and especially no one in government, really cares.<\/p>\n

From resentment to division and deadlock<\/h2>\n

To date, the phenomenon of \u201cresentment\u201d has been responsible for adding another layer of heightened division among Americans<\/a>, including an increase in political polarization.<\/p>\n

That makes it much more difficult for federal government officials, as well as those at the state and local level, to reach consensus on important issues of the day<\/a>.<\/p>\n

University of California, Berkeley sociologist Arlie Hochschild\u2019s book, \u201cStrangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right<\/a>\u201d helps in explaining how this frustration and anger of small-town and rural area dwellers has resulted in increasing political support for Republican<\/a> candidates, generally, and for Trump, specifically.<\/p>\n

Given their intensifying feelings of resentment for being ignored and left behind, rural and small-town dwellers were particularly receptive to the slogan touted by Trump in his campaign \u2013 \u201cMake America Great Again!\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump won the country\u2019s small town and non-metropolitan areas by 63.2 percent to 31.3 percent, with his largest vote shares coming from the most rural areas<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Like other Republican presidential candidates over the last 10 years, Trump garnered a large majority of the vote in traditional rural areas like Appalachia, the Great Plains and parts of the South.<\/p>\n

Surprisingly, however, Trump also won a substantial proportion of the traditionally Democratic small town and rural vote in several key Midwestern industrial areas. He won 57 percent of that vote in Michigan, 63 percent in Wisconsin and 71 percent in Pennsylvania<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Why Trump triumphed<\/h2>\n

Trump implied or clearly promised to repeal Obamacare<\/a>, build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border<\/a> and deport around 11 million undocumented immigrants already in the U.S.<\/a><\/p>\n

Other appealing policies were tax cuts for both businesses and individuals<\/a>; significant reductions in the regulation of business and industry<\/a>; and import tariffs on foreign goods that compete unfairly<\/a> with American-made products.<\/p>\n

Data collected by the Cooperative Congressional Election Study<\/a> (from a national survey of more than 54,000 respondents) clearly show that people living in small towns and rural areas who supported these kinds of policies were decisively more likely to vote for Trump rather than Clinton in 2016<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Above all, Trump promised a shift in the focus of the national government so that much more attention would be directed to rural areas and small towns and the challenges they faced<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This evidently buoyed the hope of Trump supporters in these areas that they would be getting something closer to their fair share of government attention and resources.<\/p>\n