Since Donald Trump's win in the 2016 presidential election, there have been many attempts to explain a group that helped give him an electoral edge.

He needed to win rural voters.

But some believe much of the analysis by the mainstream media is botched and ignores the realities of rural life.

That's according to producers of Backroad Ballads, a new podcast borne out of a series of conversations with rural voters.

It seemed with the election coming up and people focused on rural voters, it would be a good time to look behind the curtain at rural voting patterns.

History.

Context.

I think there's just been a lot of really great research in recent years, and a lot of experts have come out with really nuanced views on rural politics.

And so the idea for background ballots was that in this election year, we really wanted to do a kind of tone setting exercise and just have a lot of broad conceptual conversations about what rural politics look like in 2024 and sort of what we've gotten wrong in the past.

I did three conversations for about good ballots, and it was a lot of sort of trying to talk with people whose work I was familiar with and who I thought had something to say that wasn't being said on a sort of mainstream media stage.

One conversation was economics and political economy.

Another episode.

I really wanted to have a sort of demographics based conversation like is rural America simply more conservative because it's older and whiter?

Spoiler alert, No.

But that does play a significant role in the politics of small town places.

It's interesting in the disrespect that in recent elections, Democrats have chosen not to contest with rural voters, and Republicans have built a substantial kind of lead among in rural communities.

And so this presidential cycle, it seems like that's been thrown a cocked hat.

I don't think it's so much because rural voters are an overwhelming number as much as it is.

There is a way that people identify with rural voters.

And a lot of folks in the suburbs in the U.S. think of themselves as rural.

They came from a rural area.

They had to go to city to work.

So I think more and more you're seeing rural identity kind of be lifted up and politicians seeing the need to reach to towards rural communities.

And I think that there's going to be quite a political debate about who's better for rural communities.

And small towns.

There really are different levels of wealth and people with vastly different interests in the political system.

There are poor people in rural America.

There are working class people in rural America.

There are middle class people in rural America and there are wealthy individuals in rural America.

And those wealthy individuals are more likely to vote than anyone else.

And so wealthy rural voters, like wealthy urban voters, are more likely to support Republicans.

So that's one thing that I think that this broad, sweeping claim about rural voters voting against their own interests really, really misses.

I got brought in to do the last of these shows, which was a conversation with scholars about democracy, where we really looked was what are the tenets of democracy and how do they play out in local rural sections?

And I think back to this right there.

I mean, I live in the counties probably registered 3 to 1 Democrat and voted 4 to 1 for Trump.

But two years ago when we had this flood, it was devastating.

And people didn't ask what your political ID is, What who did you vote for?

It was amazing.

We often think of democracy is what the registration is or how people are voting, but democracy is also how we take care of our neighbors.

I hope that people who are from small towns and who don't feel represented by the mainstream media come away from these conversations thinking, okay, there are people who understand my experience and who are not just pushing these tired ideas about like people from the place I came from.

The Daily yonder and rule assembly produced backyard ballots.

You can listen to the podcast by going to daily yonder dot com.