Buttressing that bright spot is this one.  When asked to rate the candidates on a thermometer scale (0=cold, 100=hot), McCain and Obama fare almost the same:  McCain was 39% warm, 40% cool and Obama 37% warm, 42% cool.  Well within the 3.75 margin of error.

In other words, even after a brutal primary season and a relatively unchallenged season for McCain, Obama is more than holding his ground.

Obama holds an 8-point advantage on who's better suited to handle the economy and a whopping 11 point advantage on who's more likely to bring the right kind of change.

The candidate are tied or within the margin of error on who's "on your side," taxes, dealing with issues facing rural areas and Iraq.

When asked which candidates shares their values, McCain holds a 9-point lead.

Finally, the poll found that McCain polls 90% among Republicans, while Obama nets only 72% of Democrats.

Some thoughts on this.  First, the poll was taken while the Democratic primary was ongoing.  I believe that when Hillary at last bows out, Obama's numbers are going to see a natural uptick, especially in terms of regaining Democrats.

Going forward, I think Obama needs to get out in rural settings across the country (and I think Hillary needs to get out there for him, as well).  As a general rule, I think that Paul Loeb is still correct:  when people get a chance to see and hear Obama, they tend to like and support him.  I know this hasn't always been the case in the primary season but again, when the comparison isn't Obama to Clinton but Obama to McCain, I think he's going to naturally fare better with rural voters.

The Obama campaign needs to spend money on rural votes.  Rural radio is dirt cheap compared to television.  When the farm market reports start crackling, there ought to be thirty and sixty second spots where Obama talks up his plan to increase health care access for rural veterans, bring broadband to under-served areas, and his  support for the farm bill.

Those tiny weekly newspapers that serve rural areas (ours is called The Country Journal) can seem like a flimsy joke compared to the Boston Globe or the Chicago Tribune.  But they get read faithfully cover to cover every week.  It doesn't cost much to put an ad in them and believe me, readers would notice.

One thing this poll shows is that contrary to the mainstream myth - that Obama's just a latte-sippin', arugala-eatin' city slicker who can't be bothered with anything outside the city limits - is not only wrong, but rural people know that it's wrong.  Even without a full-court press in their direction, rural voters embrace Obama on plenty of key issues.  Look again at that number on who's more likely to bring about the change we need - Obama's up 11 points on McCain.

I thought the whole brouhaha over Obama's bitter comments was mostly manufactured nonsense.  Here's the crux of what Obama said.

<You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it's not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.>

Yeah, that bit about the clinging to guns was inartful.  But the context is what we ought to look at.  Obama was talking about how rural people often feel ignored and/or abandoned by government.  They get told this or that is going to happen and then nothing happens.  Over and over and over.  Obama is right when he says that makes a person cynical.  He's right that we need a candidate who wants to address this.

Where the rubber hits the road is not whether Obama can butcher a chicken, milk a cow, bait a hook or clean a gun.  It's whether, on issues effecting rural communities - access to health care, rising fuel costs, support for small farms - he's got thoughtful plans that he's ready to implement.  As I noted elsewhere, he does.  Check out John McCain's website for the details on his rural policy.  See anything?  Me neither.

This is what I'm talking about.

During the same conversation that gave us the bitter flap, Obama also said that the challenge is "to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there's not evidence of that in their daily lives."

He's right.  And I think this poll shows us that rural America is more than ready to hear him out.

-crossposted at The Back Forty.