The answer is actually multi-dimensional. For starters, it is a well known fact among linguists that small populations tend to preserve features of earlier language and dialect forms than larger population areas do. Perhaps a better word is "conserve" rather than "preserve." This feature, I believe, translates over to other areas of human life, though, including religious beliefs, moral values, and culture. Smaller communities tend to conserve earlier standards better than larger ones do.
Now, as many people realize as they get older, "newer" does not necessarily mean "better." In fact, the older I get, the more I believe that fewer and fewer "new" ways of doing things are better than the old ways.
And then there is the matter of self-reliance. Individualism. People who live in small, rural communities, don't have the "benefits" of the interconnectedness of large urban communities, where most everybody within these urban environments has their own special niche in the big machine. In the rural setting, most folks have to know quite a bit about just about everything. Ask a farmer, for example. You'll find out the average farmer not only knows a lot about crops, breeds, and how to grow and raise them, but he or she also knows how to repair most of the equipment that they use, fix the house or barn and the truck, and just about everything else. This is common in rural areas. These folks are independent and self reliant. They think for themselves. They don't like or trust big government, thus by definition, they are conservative, whether republican or democrat.
Just about the only "specialists" I have found in rural communities, except doctors and lawyers, are transplants from the big city who decide to "get away from it all" so they can express their "inner artist" as they attempt to be creative in an alien environment. Usually doesn't work until a whole bunch of other city dwellers move out into the sticks to join them, bringing all their wacked out city values and liberalism with them. But then it isn't rural anymore. Often these areas become gentrified, as the urbanites buy up properties, driving up real estate values (and taxes) for the locals, who as a result, resent the urbanites all the more. And adhere even more strongly to their conservative values.
Well, that's the way I see it.
Very nice reply - Your first paragraph is a unique explanation no one has mentioned. Very interesting and provacative. Thanks for you insight.
I'll bite, what whacked out city values would those be? I lived in rural East Texas for 10 years. We lived in a town of 882, that was 50 miles from a city of over 10,000 and 90 miles from a city of over 100,000. Going to the doctor was an all day event.
I hated every moment we spent there, and only stayed because my father-in-law's health was poor and my wife wanted to be near him. It was a joyous day when we packed up the kids and moved back to a real city.
That stuff about small towns being friendly? Ha! The people in Dallas are 10x more friendly, and not nearly as cliquish.
The differences with the locals in tiny town wasn't along political lines, although I'm a Republican, and there were no Republicans in county office. The real differences were about recreation. If you don't hunt, fish, or live for Friday night football games, you might as well have leprosy.
Worse, if you prefered books to Stalone movies and Harley Davidsons to 4 wheelers, you were a suspected communist.