In our first past the post voting system, the parties will gravitate to positions that roughly 50% of the people have. If there were two candidates that were bo

In our first past the post voting system, the parties will gravitate to positions that roughly 50% of the people have. If there were two candidates that were both ignoring rural areas and were 50/50 with urbanites, it would be only rational for one to try to capture the remaining 17% of people who live in rural areas. That would make it so that the candidate who ignores the rural population would be a sure loser. The only thing that could happen then would be that the other party also fights for the rural vote or that they try to claim a larger share of the urban vote to make up for their disadvantage in rural communities. In either case, votes from the entire country would matter.