Believe it or not, just because mainstream media likes to paint most of the conservative parts of the US as evil places of hate, they very much are not. They just tend to be poorer/not as industrialized.
I think that the 'cultural reasons' they're referring to are probably more likely to be stereotypes around those areas being home to backwards inbred hill people who marry each other's cousins at gunpoint, have two teeth remaining, use outhouses, etc, etc.
Every group needs some other group to look down on, I guess.
This certainly isn't about politics as, well, there pretty much isn't a more conservative place than where I come from. It didn't occur to me that someone would inject left/right politics into my comment, but I guess that's just the way things are now.