Rural voters are starting to turn on Trump
President Trump is steadily losing the support of his rural base, with just 47 percent of people in "non-metro" areas approving of the president in September, and 47 percent more disapproving. Those numbers are down from his first four weeks in office, when 55 percent of rural voters supported Trump and 39 percent disapproved, a Reuters/Ipsos daily tracking poll shows. In the election, rural Americans supported Trump over Hillary Clinton by 26 points.
"Every president makes mistakes," said one of the poll's respondents, John Wilson, 70. "But if you add one on top of one, on top of another one, on top of another, there's just a limit."
Reuters finds several causes for rural voters' disappointment:
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"Rural people are more cynical about the federal government than people in general are," explained Karl Stauber, the owner of an economic development agency in Virginia. "They've heard so many promises, and they've not seen much done."
Reuters combined rural respondents' results over a four-week period in September, with between 1,300 and 2,000 responses per poll, each with a margin of error of plus or minus 3 points. Read the full results here.
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Jeva Lange was the executive editor at TheWeek.com. She formerly served as The Week's deputy editor and culture critic. She is also a contributor to Screen Slate, and her writing has appeared in The New York Daily News, The Awl, Vice, and Gothamist, among other publications. Jeva lives in New York City. Follow her on Twitter.
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