Pundits have been giving George Allen a hard time for running one of the most incompetent campaigns in recent history, but a new poll shows that he may have been swimming upstream from the beginning. Rural voters, who favored Bush in 2000 by sixteen points and by nineteen points in 2004, have swung into the Democratic camp.

A new poll by the Center for Rural Strategies shows rural voters favoring Democratic candidates for the Senate by four points, and favoring Democratic House candidates by a whopping thirteen. It was rural voters, you may recall, whom Allen was trying to butter up with his "Macaca, welcome to the real America" comment.

The reason? Rural Americans, whose children service disproportionately in the infantry, are fed up with the war. Although twenty-eight percent in September cited it as the top issue driving their vote, by October (one of the deadliest months so far) that number had leapt to thirty-eight, with sixty percent saying we should leave Iraq by next year. Moral issues, meanwhile, hardly registered as a driving force, with more than twice as many listing economic concerns as their leading charge to the next Congress.

This is obviously good news for the Democrats, who have been struggling in recent years to brush off their reputation as urban elites, and bad news for Republicans who have been relying on rural turnout to hold on to their majority. The big question, however, is whether Democrats can hold on the gains they've made this year. No doubt the war will remain a pressing issue no matter what they do, but Democrats can grab the initiative by focussing on economic issues. I'd start with a push on the minimum wage. It might still face a presidential veto, but it sure would help rural voters realize which side their bread is buttered on.