A group called Catalist had a
good article a while ago that made a similar point about the importance of rural voters in 2018:
Democratic gains were uneven across geography too, both at the Congressional level and in statewide elections. There has been a lot of attention paid to the Democratic victories in suburban areas, but we find that Democratic gains were actually largest in rural areas. These gains weren’t enough to get over 50% and win seats in many rural districts, so they have escaped much of the mainstream election analysis to this point. These changes are nonetheless important, particularly because they were large in many of the midwest battleground states that will no doubt be important in 2020.
I think some people really underestimate how much of a difference it makes whether Democrats lose rural counties by e.g. 60-40 versus 75-25, and how many persuadable voters there actually are in this country, even in rural areas. A lot of these voters may not vote Democratic in the long run, but even if that is the case, we could still see a pretty serious "dead cat bounce" in 2020.
