THE ELUSIVE FARM VOTE
Murphy, Donald R.
the elusive farm vote by DONALD R. MURPHY Is the farm vote still worth working for? Politicians of both parties seem to think so. Both Vice President Richard M. Nixon and Senator John F. Kennedy...
...This year Nixon seems to be having better luck or more skill...
...There can, therefore, be some last minute shifts, as in 1948, when low corn prices pushed the farm vote to Harry Truman, and, as in 1956, when the Suez crisis helped Eisenhower...
...The religious issue may help Nixon in many states...
...Many farmers in other states say they are undecided...
...In Wisconsin last spring, an early poll by the Wisconsin Agriculturist showed religion playing a big part in the Presidential primary there...
...Farms ................56.3% 43.7% Small towns (2,500-9,999) ..44.1 55.9 Cities (10,000 up) ...58.5 41.5 Somewhat to the astonishment of both groups, farm and city voters tend to line up in much the same way...
...When the Wisconsin Agriculturist Poll asked all farmers, "Do you approve or disapprove of labor unions?," thirty-nine per cent said "Approve," and thirty-three per cent said "Disapprove...
...In 1952, for instance, Iowa farmers said, in several polls, that the Democrats would do more for farm income than Republicans...
...There are more Catholic voters in Wisconsin than in Iowa, and Kennedy's chances therefore look better in Wisconsin...
...In 1956, the farm townships voted 43.6 per cent for Eisenhower, while one of the towns, St...
...But in the Presidential election of 1956, the farm townships gave President Eisenhower 45.6 per cent, while the county seat, Black River Falls, gave him 65.2 per cent...
...In Iowa, farmers gave Eisenhower sixty-eight per cent of the vote in 1952 but only fifty-three per cent in 1956...
...Apparently, Nixon profited by increasing popular concern about trouble overseas...
...It jumps around from election to election, and often its relatively small proportion of the total vote proves decisive...
...it also throws light on the notion that some state legislatures are "farmer dominated...
...Two—The farm vote does not stay put...
...Catholics voted for Kennedy and Protestants for Senator Hubert Humphrey...
...One way of sorting out the farm DONALD R. MURPHY Is the research director for Wallaces Farmer...
...Justus In The Minneapolis Star It Droppeth As the Gentle Rain from Heaven Why is there such a political difference between farm and small-town people in the same county...
...In Minnesota, an early 1960 poll by the Minneapolis Tribune showed the same division among farm, city, and small town votes...
...When there is unemployment in the cities and low prices on the farms, there is usually a shift to Democratic candidates in both areas...
...In 1956, Eisenhower won a very thin margin in the farm vote in many Midwestern states...
...Many of them have, or have had, city jobs...
...Of the men, twenty-three per cent had once been union members...
...Many have relatives who work in the city...
...In Wisconsin, in the 1958 election for governor, this is the way the two-party vote divided: Nelson Thomson (Dem...
...The largest town is under 3,000...
...A crisis in farm affairs may change the picture...
...Most people would call it a farm county...
...41 This is the pattern...
...Small towns in the Middle West usually vote Republican...
...Their votes do not change much...
...40% Small towns________ 51 Cities...
...crats, but with some shifting back and forth...
...The small town vote and the farm vote in a good many states habitually slant off in different directions...
...It looks as if trouble abroad would help the Republicans...
...The city vote leans traditionally toward the Demovote is to find the townships in a given state or district that are classified by the census as eighty per cent rural-farm...
...The real puzzle is the farm vote...
...Bureau of the Census reports that only ten per cent of the nation's people live on farms...
...Which way will the shifts go this year...
...This adds up to a considerable shift in the farm attitude toward labor unions...
...The impact of crisis overseas is shown by the shift in the Iowa farm vote in two weeks this summer...
...This is only a sample of the farm vote, of course, but it is a big sample and widely distributed...
...Economic difficulties seem to push cities and farm districts over to the Democratic side...
...Small towns were 52 per cent Republican, and cities were 43.6 per cent Republican...
...In the special election in Iowa's Fourth Congressional District in 1959, the farm townships gave the Republican candidate 47.7 per cent, while the small towns gave him 59 per cent...
...In the 1958 election for governor, this was the result: Loveless Murray (Dem...
...In many cases, it is the courthouse crowd in the smaller county seats that exerts the most influence...
...Croix Falls, voted 80.1 per cent for him...
...While the decline in farm income almost automatically made more farm Democrats, Benson's particular gift for rubbing farmers the wrong way undoubtedly helped this tendency...
...These small town people usually vote quite differently from their neighbors on the land...
...Farms ................55.0% 45.0% Small towns......47.5 52.5 Cities..................58.0 42.0 This is not a new development...
...Benson, it seems, will not be so much help to the Democrats in 1960 as he was in 1958...
...This shift, as in Iowa, went directly against the national trend and also against the trend in the small towns that sometimes dominate so-called farm counties...
...While Democrats continue to quote Nixon's 1954 statements about Benson's virtues, many farmers seem convinced that Benson's day is over, no matter who wins...
...Rep...
...The farm vote will continue to puzzle politicians and pollsters right up to Election Day...
...He won sixty-three per cent of the farm vote when he ran successfully for Senator in 1958...
...There are two reasons why this ten per cent is worth extraordinary political attention: One—The farm vote is heavy in states and Congressional districts where close elections are likely to develop...
...The farm vote in Minnesota, according to a poll by the Minneapolis Tribune, is favorable, as of August, to the Democrats...
...Here Humphrey's popularity may be the key to the situation...
...Rep...
...The Iowa Poll (conducted by the Des Moines Register in late July) gave Democratic candidates a higher farm vote than did the Wallaces Farmer Poll conducted two weeks later when front page headlines emphasized tension abroad...
...Take Jackson county, Wisconsin...
...If they could just get Benson back in the public eye, it might help them a great deal...
...Because the "farm counties" contain two quite different voting groups, political analysts are sometimes not quite sure what is going on in rural areas...
...In Wisconsin, William Proxmire, a Democrat, received less than thirty per cent of the farm vote when he ran unsuccessfully for governor in 1952...
...Take another Wisconsin "farm county"— Polk...
...If it is true that farm families in the Middle West do like to change their minds, what about the traditional talk of the "stable Republican farm vote in the corn belt...
...It helps clear up the prevailing confusion over the "farm vote...
...This is an error which springs from the fact that the so-called farm county is rarely all or nearly all farm...
...That is why Nixon made a speech at a plowing match at Guthrie Center, Iowa, and why Kennedy told about his farm program at another plowing match at Sioux Falls, South Dakota...
...He pulled sixty-seven per cent of the farm vote and may have helped to get Kennedy up to forty-eight per cent...
...About one-fifth of the farm voters in Iowa say they have not yet made up their minds...
...Iowa shows the same picture...
...There are a number of undecided Protestants who may boost the Kennedy total a little by election time, but at the end of summer Kennedy looked weaker among Iowa farmers than Stevenson had been at the same time in 1956...
...A recent example, remembered by all politicians, is the special election for Senator in North Dakota, where the farm vote proved decisive for the Democratic candidate...
...What happened in 1952 and 1956, using this sample as a measure of the Wisconsin farm vote...
...Farmers don't have to register in most states...
...In Iowa, a recent Wallaces Farmer Poll showed some Protestants shying away from Kennedy...
...What will happen this year in the farm belt...
...Yet they voted for General Eisenhower on the ground that he offered more hope for an end to the war in Korea than did the Democratic candidate...
...Worry about farm prices and unemployment would help the Democrats...
...Professor Leon D. Epstein, a University of Wisconsin political scientist, studied the farm vote in his state...
...Among Protestants who voted for Loveless, Democrat, in the gubernatorial election of 1958, only half said they would vote for Kennedy in 1960...
...Why the similarity in voting habits between farm and city people...
...In Wisconsin, these eighty per cent rural-farm townships add up to a total of 626 precincts which cast about 150,000 votes in 1956...
...Taylor county, Iowa, is another example...
...For instance, the Wisconsin Agriculturist Poll, in 1958, found that fifty-five per cent of the farm men, and sixty-two per cent of the farm women interviewed, had worked in town at some time...
...Wisconsin farmers gave Eisenhower sixty-six per cent in 1952 and then dropped him sharply to fifty-five per cent in 1956...
...Farmers who have not voted for years, and who originally did not intend to vote this year, may take a last minute notion to go to the polls...
...Shortage of wheat storage space in the Great Plains, or a sharp drop in hog prices—these developments would help Democratic candidates...
...The sharp decline in Republican farm strength in the Middle West from 1952 to 1958 is rooted in several causes...
...Some people think that there may be too many farm landlords around the square in the county seat and too many tenants out in the country...
...It was at the time of the Congo outbreak and the Powers' trial in Moscow...
...In 1936 Iowa farmers voted 38.6 per cent Republican for President...
...Republican candidates in 1958 tried, often unsuccessfully, to escape the curse of Benson's approval...
...Both Vice President Richard M. Nixon and Senator John F. Kennedy are striving mightily to capture support in the farmlands of America...
...GOP Candidate for Governor Farm...
...This gave Kennedy a slight lead over Nixon both on the farms and in the state as a whole...
...In Iowa, Nebraska, and Kansas, for instance, almost all the Congressional seats in 1958 were won by a margin of less than five per cent of the votes...
...One is spelled Ezra Taft Benson...
...Each will keep hoping to the last minute that the shifting farm vote will finally shift his way...
...Will Nixon hold that margin...
...In his book, Politics in Wisconsin, he summed up the habits of the Wisconsin farm voter this way: "If farmers are capable, in favorable circumstances, of being more Republican than any other group in the state, they can also, as in 1954, be much less Republican than voters in all groups of cities except those over 50,000 . . . The lavish attention which politicians of both parties give to farmers and farm issues [is based on] . . . the demonstrated capacity of Wisconsin farmers for wholesale switching of party allegiance...
...It should provide a fair picture of voting attitudes...
...Both city and farm representatives are often outvoted by the representatives of the towns...
...Part of the explanation may lie in the changing work experience of farm men and women...
...A small county seat and several smaller towns may have more votes than all the farmers in the county...
...Yet the U.S...
...But men who had once been union members voted sixty-one per cent "Approve...
...Yet pocketbook voting doesn't always prevail...
...The small towns, however, look at politics differently...
...The county seat gave Herschel Loveless, Democrat, 47.2 per cent for governor, while the farm townships voted for him by 60.8 per cent...
Vol. 24 • October 1960 • No. 10
