2018 MO Senate-How well will McCaskill perform in rural areas?

[Bidenworth2020]

was hoping y'all could give me an idea for the model I am making, similar to what NYT did for AL. Does she win any rural counties?

[GlobeSoc]

St. Genieve, Saline, maybe Adair will be decent counties for her

[America Needs a 13-6 Progressive SCOTUS]

To put this in perspective, only 6 Counties in the state voted to the left of the statewide average in the 2016 presidential election.  I think McCaskill will win several rural Counties, such as Buchanan, Saline, St. Genevieve, Jefferson, Ray, (and the 6 that voted to the left of the statewide average in the 2016 presidential election) but she will not need any of those.

[MarkD]

I don't like sounding glib about this, but only time and election results can tell. Que sera, sera, the future's not ours to see. You know the song.
There are so many rural counties in Missouri that have had a Democratic tradition to them -- counties that voted for Dukakis in 1988, that often voted Democratic for narrowly losing Democratic candidates in statewide races, that still voted for McCaskill Nixon, and Koster in 2012 -- but which swung hard right and voted a straight Republican ticket in 2016 and now won't even vote Democratic for the state legislative seats, that our ability to predict how they will vote in any future elections is impossible to tell. Was 2016 a fluke? Will those counties return to their Democratic roots any time soon? Who knows?