The main value of the GQR/Vera poll is not its confirmation of these evolving attitudes, however. Rather, its value stems from its approach to assessing who is driving those attitudes, and how those attitudes interact with policy. The poll compares people in rural areas to the general population, and measures the geographic differences in where prisons are built and where people are most likely to be jailed or imprisoned. By comparing rural residents with the broader pool of Americans, it creates an inexact proxy of partisan attitudes. “[Rural voters] are without question more politically conservative,” Dave Walker of GQR said. “If you look at Republicans throughout the country, they’ll look similar. Most of them voted for Trump, at least the white ones did. So, that’s reflected here.”

According to the poll, even rural, mostly conservative voters aren’t thrilled by the current state of mass incarceration. Sixty-one percent of all rural residents believe that constructing more prisons doesn’t actually reduce crime, compared with just over two-thirds of the general population. And only 27 percent of people in rural areas believe crime in their immediate vicinity to be a major concern.

Identifying the attitudes of these voters in particular is important. As an earlier Vera Institute study notes, the majority of the growth in jail construction and incarceration rates is actually occurring in rural areas and midsize towns. “We see where incarceration is shifting away from America’s biggest cities and trending downwards there,” the Vera Institute’s Jasmine Heiss said. “There’s the obvious question about whether that trend and the shift are the result of a continuing adherence to a tough-on-crime narrative in small places.”

But the new poll indicates that the creeping advance of mass incarceration into rural areas may run counter to the real priorities of residents there. Like the broader population, rural residents ranked prison construction dead last as a local priority, even though generally accepted wisdom says that the boom of rural jails and prisons has been a boon to struggling small-town economies. Perhaps on a related note, some data cast doubt on the stimulus effect of rural jail-building.

Heiss and Walker believe that the ambivalence toward incarceration might translate to voters’ receptiveness to political messages that support criminal-justice reform—the same way residents of major cities began electing reform-minded prosecutors as they themselves became more aware of mass incarceration. “In many ways, there’s overwhelming support for rethinking how the justice system functions and—really critically—how local governments invest limited resources into all of the different things that can make communities vibrant or safe or contribute to the quality of life,” Heiss said.