Rural voters in 11 battleground states more worried about economy than rest of nation, pessimistic about long term

Graph from The Daily Yonder Rural Poll by Lake Research Partners; click on it to enlarge.

Rural voters in 11 key battleground states in the midterm elections are more concerned about the economy than the rest of the nation, and are convinced things will be worse for the next generation.

Those are major findings of the Daily Yonder Rural Poll, commissioned by the Center for Rural Strategies and conducted by Celinda Lake of Lake Research Partners, a Democratic pollster.

Almost three-fourths of the 400 rural voters polled said the economy is not working for them, half said they don’t expect their finances to improve in the next year and 77% said they think things will be worse, not better, for the next generation of Americans.

“I was stunned by these numbers” on the economy, Lake told the Yonder. “They are really different than what we’ve seen in the past, and really different from what we’re seeing in the rest of the country, as pessimistic as the rest of the country is.”

Rural America has trended more Republican in the last 20 years, and that hasn't changed. The poll found 59% intend to vote for Republicans in congressional races and 32% said they intend to vote for Democrats. "That’s roughly the margin by which Donald Trump won the rural battleground in 2020," the Yonder notes.

“Rural America’s in a pretty Republican mood,” Lake said. “There’s no doubt about it.”

"Lake said she thinks rural voters’ economic concerns, coupled with dim views of wealthy corporations and corporate CEOs, mean that rural America is ripe for a populist message," the Yonder's Tim Marema and Sarah Melotte report.

Asked to name their top two values, Republican rural voters named freedom and faith and Democrats named equality and kindness/compassion. Members of both parties selected accountability and family as either their third or fourth most important value.