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AbstractThis article examines the origins of the unlikely alliance between Donald Trump and evangelicals, a relationship that defines the modern‐day Republican Party. Using 2016 Cooperative Congressional Election Study data, I explain how Trump ultimately succeeded among this critical group of Republican primary voters in the contest for the 2016 presidential nomination by exploiting key internal divisions. Trump initially performed well among less educated evangelicals who were less devoted to their religion and less ideologically conservative. Contrary to previous research, I find that Texas senator Ted Cruz's core support among the traditional Christian Right—very conservative, churchgoing evangelicals—resisted Trump until the late stages of the nomination contest. However, Cruz was unable to expand his support among his co‐religionists, despite his evangelical identity. Trump's success among evangelicals speaks not only to the oft‐cited importance of momentum in presidential nomination contests, but also to the significance of candidate ideology to primary voters, especially when paired with religiosity.

A symposium contribution explores NH's presidential primary as a predictor of subsequent success. It is maintained that examining how candidates fared with specific segments of the vote reveals which candidates attracted a broad-based coalition, as opposed to support mostly from one faction of the party, eg, the working class or liberal elites. Claims that the NH primary is too small & remote to be a barometer of presidential primary success are challenged, along with the conventional wisdom that NH Democrats are conservative. Turnout trends since 1976; demographic characteristics of Democratic voters in the 2000 primary; & results from the 1988, 1992, & 2000 primaries are described. It is indicated that "coalition candidates" are far more likely to win the Democratic Party's nomination than candidates who appeal to only one faction. The ability to form coalitions in NH is a good predictor of future success, even if that candidate does not win the NH primary, as was the case with Bill Clinton in 1992. 3 Tables, 5 References. J. Lindroth

The question, "What is rural?", has become increasingly salient to scholars of American politics over the past decade, especially after the 2016 election of Donald Trump. While social and political tensions between urban and rural residents of the United States are now widely recognized, rural cannot simply be defined as the antithesis of urban. Using survey data and voting returns from the 2020 election, we illustrate how urban-rural differences are best understood not as a dichotomy, but as a continuum. Large metropolitan core counties comprise one pole of this continuum: their residents are most likely to vote Democratic, and to express liberal attitudes on a variety of topics. At the other pole are counties far from urban areas with no towns, where conservative attitudes are widespread and Republican majorities are substantial. Between the two poles lie a continuum of counties with widely varying positions along the liberal-conservative dimension and voting records to match. We find this urban-rural continuum provides considerable analytical utility even in a multivariate spatial regression model that incorporates numerous other important demographic, economic, and social variables. Our analytical framework takes a step beyond the bipolarity that typically characterizes the discussion of urban and rural America.

Abstract
This study of the 2018 congressional midterms demonstrates how voting patterns and political attitudes vary across a spectrum of urban and rural areas in the United States. Rural America is no more a monolith than is urban America. The rural-urban gradient is better represented by a continuum than a dichotomy. This is evident in the voting results in 2018, just as it was in 2016. We found that the political tipping point lies beyond major metropolitan areas, in the suburban counties of smaller metropolitan areas. Democrats enjoyed even greater success in densely populated urban areas in 2018 than in 2016. Residents of these urban areas display distinctive and consistent social and political attitudes across a range of scales. At the other end of the continuum in remote rural areas, Republican candidates continued to command voter support despite the challenging national political environment. Voters in these rural regions expressed social and political attitudes diametrically opposed to their counterparts in large urban cores.

This article documents the diversity of political attitudes and voting patterns along the urban-rural continuum of the United States. We find that America's rural and urban interface, in terms of political attitudes and voting patterns, is just beyond the outer edges of large urban areas and through the suburban counties of smaller metropolitan areas. Both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton performed well in densely populated areas on the urban side of the interface, but they faced increasingly difficult political climates and sharply diminished voter support on the rural side of the interface. The reduction in support for Clinton in 2016 in rural areas was particularly pronounced. Even after controlling for demographic, social, and economic factors (including geographic region, education, income, age, race, and religious affiliation) in a spatial regression, we find that a county's position in the urban-rural continuum remained statistically significant in the estimation of voting patterns in presidential elections.

It is a common conceit in American politics that urban voters tend to vote for the Democratic Party, while those in rural areas vote for Republicans. In new research, Dante J. Scala and Kenneth M. Johnson find that the truth is not nearly so simple – changes in population and the rural economy have led to the growth of democratic enclaves in 'recreational counties' which are dominated by the new rural service and amenity economy. They argue that while at the county level, the 'big sort' may be true, if we widen our view, rural America is increasingly looking more politically and demographically diverse.