Lots of takes here seem to come from people who probably have not spent any time talking to rural voters or campaigning in small towns.
A big part of it is the bifurcation that's been happening for some years now as Democrats have become a more urban party and the Republicans more rural. However, while Obama's share declined from 2008 to 2012, Hillary got butchered.
1. Minimal attention was paid to rural areas by the campaign. See the article linked below. Substantially fewer offices were opened in rural areas than by Obama's campaign either time. Sure, Trump seemed to eschew ground game but in many places, there was just no Democratic voice.
https://www.vox.com/mischiefs-of-faction/2017/11/16/16665756/shrinking-democratic-ground-game
2. As others have mentioned, the farm economy is doing awful right now. Farm incomes declining, lots of people selling their property. Trump's message resonated in places where the population has been declining, schools have closed, opioids are wreaking havoc, etc. There was a political appetite for change, which is why in many rural areas (the South excepted), Bernie Sanders performed well.
3. There really is a cultural divide, be it real or perceived. Bill Clinton understood how to bridge it, and advised the campaign to focus more on rural issues, but it's clear that the campaign wasn't geared to reach out to rural voters. The Politico article on this subject mentions that "a staffer in Brooklyn was dedicated to rural outreach, but the assignment came just weeks before the election".
https://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/hillary-clinton-rural-voters-trump-231266
4. Too socially liberal in a careless fashion. Obama wasn't socially conservative by any means but he had calculated positions that he knew how to sell, especially in 2008. Hillary just went all in on social issues.
5. Fairly or unfairly, people just really didn't like Hillary, and without Democratic voices on the ground there was nothing to counter this.
Thanks Marty for posting this thread!
I posted a few similar such threads regarding "Why did Dairy Country vote Trump", as well as providing many comments on similar threads elsewhere.
VPH does a pretty good job of summarizing some of the issues when it comes to this topic.
1.) Firstly, we need to separate the interests of the large-scale "Factory Farms" in places like the Central Valley of California from the interests of smaller and family owned farms that aren't essentially extensions of Wall Street (Like many of the larger Agribusiness outfits in Cali).
Obviously these are places where we see the greatest conflict and "Class War", frequently synonymous with areas where the UFW was strongest in the late '60s > '80s, and now increasingly the foremen are Mexican-American rather than Anglo, while much of the workforce is Central American or from Indigenous backgrounds.
2.) It's important to also distinguish not only between the scaling of the Farming population (Certain products require large amounts of acreage, but are essentially capitol intensive farming versus labor intensive), but also the amount of farming that is the equivalent of a heavily mechanized operation requiring a relatively small amount of labor, while the farmer's frequently have family and relatives that perform the labor, while ultimately the bulk of the family income comes from working elsewhere, and just using the profits from the sales of agricultural products to pay off taxes and mortages on the the property.
3.) So if we look at Capitol intensive farming, obviously Grain farmers from the Dakotas down to Oklahoma fall into that category, not to mention a few counties in Oregon and Washington State along the Columbia River Valley.
These industries are not as dependent upon agricultural labor from elsewhere, and are less prone towards a negative Nativist backlash, when it comes to an extreme economic protectionist regime that also appears opposed to foreign guest workers in the agricultural sector.
Many of these voters likely not only felt a giant sting with HRC's flip-flop on TPP and also believed that Trump would at least protect the grain industry in various negotiations with Asian Countries.
4.) Dairy Farming---- This is a bit more confusing, considering that Democrats have traditionally done better with Dairy farms than Grain farmers in most part of the US. Sure you have an automation of milking machines, but dairy farmers have seen a devastating collapse in prices over the past five years, to the point where the price of milk and cheese is basically being given away at-cost to domestic consumption.
Much of this has to do with changes in domestic consumption patterns, but still the Canadian Dairy Industry has increasingly made inroads into the American Domestic market, which is part of the reason why Trump tried to ignite the "Cheese Wars" with Canada early on in his presidency.
I'm actually curious how this will play out if Trump goes full tilt Anti-NAFTA, since the US dairy industry actually did quite well off of this free Trade Agreement.
Still the shortage of agricultural labor to perform roles such as operating and maintaining the milking machines hits hard in many extremely aging rural counties, where most of the local young folk leave for jobs elsewhere, and increasingly supplanted by a Latino-American workforce.
5.) Reading the Business trade press from the Pacific Northwest, various agricultural industries are facing major shortages of labor, from Onion and Potato farmers in Eastern Oregon/Washington to Idaho, as well as farmers that run the Apple/Pear orchards of the Columbia River Valley, not to even go into the vineyard workers....
These are labor intensive agricultural industries where Trump's backlash against Latino farmworkers is already hitting the industry hard when it comes to a shortage of Labor, regardless of the whole "Build the Wall" crap....
6.) Would not be surprised to see many parts of farming country swing hard Dem in 2020 under the current Administration, unless he can actually make progress on "Fair Trade" deals with Canada/Mexico, not to mention exports to Asia (We might have already lost the boat on that), as well as some mechanism to provide agricultural guest-worker labor with Mexico, since let's face it we're not going to see a ton of folks migrating from other parts of the US or Oregon to work in the Onion farms of Malheur County, let alone the Potato processing plants of Milton-Freewater.
