Parsing the rural mid-term vote

See this New York Times graphic showing how various demographic groups voted in the recent mid-term election. Most demographic groups, e.g., women, men, all voters aged 30 and over, Catholics, Protestants, Midwesterners and Southerners supported Republicans. Rural voters also supported Republicans--by a margin of 28%. This compares to suburban voters, who voted Republican by a 12% margin and those living in places with populations between 10,000 and 50,000, who voted Republican by a 14% margin. On the other hand, those living in urban clusters of 500,000 or more supported Democrats by a 32% margin, followed by those living in urban clusters between 50,000 and 500,000, who supported Democrats by a 6% margin.

A related NYT article is here. Another graphic, this one showing movement of various Demographic groups to the right or left (mostly to the right, in varying degrees) in the mid-term election, is here (click no. 10)

For more analysis of the rural vote, see the Daily Yonder's excellent coverage here.