Farmers Favor Santorum
Most producers aren’t happy with field of presidential candidates.
Bryce Knorr
Published: Mar 27, 2012
Farmers tend to be conservative, religious and Republican. So, it's no surprise they also favor Rick Santorum in the race for President.
The former Pennsylvania senator has done well in the Midwest, popularity reflected in the latest Farm Futures survey. Santorum beat front runner Mitt Romney 36% to 25% in our poll of more than 1,500 produc-ers. Both Republicans were more popular among farmers than President Barack Obama, chosen by only 13%.
The other two candidates left in the GOP primary field trailed behind. Former House Speaker Newt Gin-grich polled 11% with Rep. Ron Paul at 7%.
Some 8% of those who answered the survey didn't choose a candidate, an indication that farmers, like voters in general, remain somewhat dissatisfied with the current field. Two thirds of those surveyed said they were not satisfied with any of the candidates running, and even those supporting Obama appeared unhappy.
FARMERS LIKE HIM: Poll shows Santorum comes out on top, but there are issues. Breaking down support on a state-by-state basis is difficult due to relatively high margins of error, even though the overall margin for error for the survey on a two-person question was 2.5%. Still, results for states that have already held GOP primaries conform to the trends we found in our survey, done by email invitations to an on-line survey March 5 through March 20.
For example, Santorum won big victories in Minnesota and North Dakota, and our results among farm-ers showed Santorum favored by a wide enough margins to exceed even high survey error rates. But farm-ers in Illinois favored Romney, according to our survey. Even though the margin, 35% to 32%, was not enough to be statistically significant, it's an indication of the former Massachusetts governor's strength - he won the Land of Lincoln easily. Likewise, farmers favored Romney in Ohio and Michigan, where he also won.
While farmers differ on the candidates, there was general agreement backing limits on so-called "Super-PACs," which are dominating campaign spending in the primary. Some 84% of those responding to the survey said they were in favor of an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would limit the amount of money corporations, unions and individuals can donate to super-PACs. Still, though 91% of farmers backing Obama favored such a measure, only 77% of Romney supporters did.
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