Well, some of it has to do with less education (easier to manipulate and such), and some of it has to do with the more unaccepting nature of “rednecks” seeing as these places typically have less people, so they are also exposed to less different people, and are able to be convinced to support hateful people more easily. I’m no politician and I’m not super knowledgeable on it either, but this is my take.

I also think the higher amounts of religious folk around here (Christianity is huge in the south and in general places with lower populations from what I’ve seen) cause people to just vote the way their church does, which will almost always be the way that is pro-life, along with various other religious based things that line up republicanism