Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton continue to score well in rural areas in the South, reports the Daily Yonder, with Trump taking Louisiana and Kentucky on Saturday and Clinton easily winning Louisiana.
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz had the strongest showing among Republican candidates in rural Maine. Cruz also won Kansas, while Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders won the Democratic vote in The Sunflower State. Both parties voted Tuesday in Mississippi and Michigan, while Republicans also vote in Idaho and Hawaii. (Note: Ted Cruz won in Idaho; Donald Trump took Mississippi, Hawaii and Michigan; Hillary Clinton won in Mississippi and Bernie Sanders won in Michigan)
Trump earned 46.3 percent of the rural vote in Kentucky, on his way to winning the state over Cruz by 35-31. Cruz got 29.2 percent of rural votes, Ohio Gov. John Kasich 12.2 percent and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio 10.4 percent. Trump was especially popular in Eastern Kentucky coal counties and rural Southern Kentucky, but lost badly to Cruz in Western Kentucky.
Trump edged Cruz for rural votes in Louisiana, 44.1 percent to 39.2 percent, a slightly larger margin than overall, while Rubio was a distant third with 8.9 percent of rural votes. Cruz turned the tables in Maine, winning 46.1 percent of rural votes on his way to winning the state. Trump scored 33.7 percent of rural votes, Kasich 11.1 percent and Rubio 7.4 percent. In the overall vote in Kansas, Cruz beat Trump 48.2 percent to 23.3 percent.
Clinton dominated Sanders in Louisiana, taking 66.1 percent of rural votes to 22.4 percent for Sanders. Overall, Clinton received 71.1 percent of votes in Louisiana, compared to 23.2 percent for Sanders. Sanders won in Nebraska, 57.1 percent to 42.9 percent, but Clinton did better in rural areas than she did in metro ones, getting 48.1 percent of rural votes and 42.4 percent of votes in cities.
Sanders beat Clinton in the overall vote in Kansas, 67.7 percent to 32.3 percent.
The most dramatic results came in the Kentucky Republican caucuses. There, Texas Senator Ted Cruz beat Trump in the cities by about 2 percentage points, but lost narrowly in the micropolitan counties (38.8% for Trump and 32.5% for Cruz). In rural Kentucky counties, however, Cruz lost to Trump by 17 percentage points.
There was an in-state pattern to Trump’s win in Kentucky. The New Yorker won up to 60 percent of the vote in many counties in the Eastern Kentucky coalfields and in rural southern Kentucky. But he lost to Cruz badly in far Western Kentucky and in the Bluegrass.
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