Hillary Clinton

The largest U.S. urban areas, with populations of 1 million or more, enjoyed a 2-percent expansion in the number of jobs since last June, while in rural counties "job growth was a bit more than a tenth of that rate, or 0.29 percent, or about 60,000 jobs," reports the Daily Yonder. In the 924 counties that are not adjacent to any metropolitan area, the number of jobs declined by just over 1,000.

California went to Clinton, but rural areas were split, says the Sacramento Bee, with many counties in the white, rural north going to Trump. “Trump beat Clinton in 25 California counties, mostly in the Central Valley and the mountains of Northern California, places that long have been bastions of conservatism,” says the Bee.

The split in Republican and Democratic support in U.S. cities versus rural America widened as Donald Trump won the presidency, says the Daily Yonder. Trump garnered 66 percent of the vote in rural counties, up by five points from fellow Republican Mitt Romney in 2012, while Democrat Hillary Clinton got a much smaller share of the rural vote, 29 percent, than President Obama's 38 percent in his 2012 re-election.

News of Donald Trump’s election shocked the international climate-change proceedings taking place this week in Marrakech, Morocco. During his campaign, Trump vowed to revoke America’s participation in the Paris Agreement, a global plan to keep temperature increases below 2 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial averages. More than 190 countries have signed the agreement, and many consider it a last hope for fighting climate change. Trump has also vowed to dismantle President Obama’s clean power plan.

Rural Mexicans who rely on funds sent my their undocumented relatives in the U.S. are praying for Donald Trump to lose on Election Day, says Reuters. Trump has said he would deport illegal immigrants if he were president, cutting off a vital economic lifeline.

At least $93.4 million has been donated to candidates and political action committees in 2015 and 2016 by people, companies and groups in the agribusiness sector, says DTN in a perusal of campaign records compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.

The most partisan members of the Republican and Democratic parties — the people who vote in primary elections — cluster in different parts of the country. Democrats live in cities and Republicans in rural areas, says the Daily Yonder.

Traditionally Republican rural America, where many residents are social and fiscal conservatives, will vote overwhelmingly for Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, according to a poll commissioned by DTN/The Progressive Farmer. The telephone survey found 46 percent supported Trump, 24 percent backed Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, 10 percent said they were vote for a third-party candidate and 20 percent were undecided or preferred "none of the above."

Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller got himself in hot water when a tweet went out from his account calling Hillary Clinton the c-word. Miller, who was nominated by Donald Trump to serve as co-chair (along with GOP funder Charles Herbster) on Trump’s Agricultural and Rural Ag Committee, initially said his Twitter account had been hacked. Later, however, his staff admitted that the fault was theirs. They claimed they had retweeted another tweet without realizing it contained vulgar language.

The Association of Equipment Manufacturers, whose members make construction equipment as well as farm machinery, is running a pair of broadcast ads in swing states to promote infrastructure spending, each slanted toward a Trump or Clinton audience, says AgWeb. An AEM spokesman says it is a "unique way to approach our messaging to external audiences."

California Agriculture Secretary Karen Ross and former two-term Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear are among three leading candidates for agriculture secretary if Hillary Clinton wins the presidency, says The Hagstrom Report. It was apparently the first time Beshear has been tabbed as a potential nominee; Ross has been mentioned repeatedly by ag lobbyists and in published reports as a contender.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump told a recent rally in Des Moines that Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton wants to shut down family farms, impose radical regulations, push tax rates on farms and other businesses to 50 percent and impose an estate tax of up to 45 percent on farms. "We rate the combination of claims as False," concludes the independent fact-checking site Politifact.