There’s no doubt, however, that Trumpism, with its implicit ethno-nationalist orientation that privileges white Christian Americans over Americans who are not one of those things, has proven more popular in rural places than the more diverse urban and suburban ones, opening up a rural-urban gulf that didn’t exist outside the Midlands (which for some reason has long been polarized in this way.) That trend continued this November, when Trump met or made new records for rural victory margins in nine of the eleven regions that have rural counties in them. In rural Yankeedom – which Obama won by 5.9 sixteen years ago – Trump beat Harris by a whopping 19.3 points. In the rural Midlands, which George W Bush won by 21 in 2000, Trump’s margin of victory was 44.6, four points higher than in 2016. His margin in rural Greater Appalachian counties, his margin was a staggering 55.6 points, triple that of Bush back in 2000. He won the rural Deep Southern counties by 34.6, more than double Mitt Romney’s 2012 margin and more than triple Bush’s in 2000.