United Kingdom

Yes, Tory members favour Truss; I wouldn't necessarily put that down to racism, since, as you point out, she has been the more "Brexit is brilliant" cheerleader type over the past few years.

Sunak may be of Indian heritage, but he also went to Winchester and Oxford, and worked for investment banks and hedge funds. That's the kind of CV Tories like, especially after the flighty, stranger-to-the-truth journalist career of Johnson turned out to show his true colours. I wouldn't rule him out yet - it depends if Truss can continue to convince the Tory members that she is heavyweight enough to be PM - they seem to think so now (thanks to the Daily Mail, perhaps) but she could easily make gaffes over the next few weeks, or her Lib Dem and remainer past may start to make her look "unreliable" in their eyes.

As to the feelings of "the Shires", we can look at a poll for "would do a good of bad job as PM?" for the South region.

https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/ct/news/documents/2022-07/Ipsos%20Conservative%20leadership%20polling%20PUBLIC.pdf

(very good/fairly good/neither bad nor good/fairly bad/very bad)

Starmer: 10/17/20/14/31
Sunak: 9/25/22/17/17
Truss: 12/18/24/13/16

So the typical person in the South slightly prefers Sunak to Truss, I'd say (depends on how you weight 'very' v. 'fairly', I suppose). He also slightly leads her in the 'voted Con in 2019' column.