Democrats who want rural voters to switch sides need to 'show up' and fight for rural communities

Democrats need to fight harder than Republicans on
issues that impact rural Americans. (Rural Strategies photo)

Building trust with rural Americans by fighting hard for the issues rural voters care about is what Democrats need to do now, reports Mara Liasson of NPR.

While Democrats losing rural voters is not news, what Democrats should do about it is. Liasson explains, "Pollster Celinda Lake, originally from rural Montana, says she's watched as the Republican advantage with rural voters grew from a relatively narrow five-point advantage in 2000 to a whopping 25-point edge for Trump with rural voters in 2024."

Lake recently "conducted a poll of 600 likely general election voters from rural areas in battleground states," Liasson reports. "And what these voters had to say about Democrats is damning."

One polled voter said Democrats were "out of touch with middle America," according to Liasson. Another said Democrats were "lost in space. All they want to do is spend money and give stuff away."

Lake told Liasson, "The Democratic brand is in terrible shape in rural America." Lake pointed out that while most rural voters skew Republican, they are currently very dissatisfied with the economy, and that offers Democrats a window of opportunity.

"Her takeaway from the poll is that Democrats should be running to keep rural hospitals open and insulin prices down," Liasson reports. "In other words, Democrats don't have to change their positions to win rural voters. They just have to fight harder for what they already believe in."

Dee Davis, the president of the Center for Rural Strategies, the group that commissioned the poll, said that Democrats that go all in on rural issues can fight for the same concerns that more urban populations worry about. Liasson adds, "After all, college-educated urban voters also care about healthcare, gas prices and jobs. The strategy Davis thinks Democrats should adopt is not rocket science."

Davis told Liasson, "You got to show up. You got to talk to people. You might not win the first time out, but you got to be there and compete."

Survey: Farmers want input costs, tariffs and health care addressed by midterm election candidates

Farm Journal map, from Farm Journal survey

U.S. farmers are getting pummeled by skyrocketing diesel fuel prices and input costs for fertilizers and machinery repairs, while also grappling with trade obstacles, concerns about rural health care and federal policy changes.

A recent Farm Journal poll shows how producers feel about the current agricultural economy as the country heads into the midterm election cycle, reports Tyne Morgan of Farm Journal. 

The survey revealed that "more than half of the farmers say federal policies have negatively impacted their operations over the past year," Morgan writes. "And as input prices, including diesel and fertilizer, continue to climb, one Ohio farmer says these expenses, and the strain they’re having on his farm, haven’t been this bad since the 1980s."

Top concerns for today's farmers and ranchers by state. (Farm Journal map, from Farm Journal survey)

Input costs were the top concern among the roughly 1,000 farmers and ranchers surveyed. Morgan reports, "Fred Yoder of Plain City, Ohio, says when you break it down between the three, fuel costs are particularly burdensome this season." Yoder told Morgan, "Right now fuel is really costing us about $1,500 of cash per day to run two tractors. That’s a lot.”

This year, trade and tariff policies are also causing farmers to worry about their futures and the futures of their communities. Morgan adds, "Kristin Duncanson of Mapleton, Minn., says uncertainty surrounding tariffs and trade policy is weighing heavily on producers and contributing to broader economic concerns across rural America."

Meanwhile, 74% of surveyed producers believe that "elected officials do not fully understand the realities farmers are facing," Morgan reports. "Duncanson says agriculture still has advocates in Washington, but fewer lawmakers have direct ties to farming communities."

The poll also revealed that "about one in four farmers say they are open to changing how they vote in the midterms depending on the issues at stake," Morgan adds. Tariffs are one of those issues. Yoder told Farm Journal, "The majority has got a very, very hard line against tariffs. We hate tariffs. We want markets, and we want market-oriented programs.”

Survey: Rural voters, especially women, are 'deeply worried about the rising cost of living'

Graph by Sarah Melotte, The Daily Yonder, from Lake Research and the Center for Rural Strategies data

The fight for rural votes during this year's midterm Senate elections could be decided by American voters seeking economy-stabilizing policies from Washington, and by women voters, who are acutely aware of rising living expenses, a new survey shows.

"Rural voters across Senate battleground states are deeply worried about the rising cost of living, and while that concern cuts across party lines, a new poll suggests it is especially pronounced among women," reports Sarah Melotte of The Daily Yonder.

The survey was conducted by Lake Research Partners and the Center for Rural Strategies, which publishes The Daily Yonder, included interviews with 600 rural voters in 13 states where the Senate seat tug-of-war is playing out. "It paints a picture of a partisan rural electorate, but one that is aligned on economic anxiety," Melotte writes. "The poll revealed a consistent gender gap in how rural voters experience economic strain."

Fifty-five percent of rural voters said "the rising cost of living is one of their top concerns," Melotte explains. "That includes about 60% of Democrats and 53% of Republicans. Women were more likely than men to cite the issue as one of their main concerns – 58% compared to 52%."

Graph by Sarah Melotte, The Daily Yonder, from Lake Research 
and the Center for Rural Strategies data

When it comes to stretching family budgets nearly "a quarter of rural women said they were ‘very worried’ about having to choose between necessities like medical bills and food or utilities, compared to only 17% of rural men," Melotte reports.

Pollster Celinda Lake told Yonder Radio, "People were adamant about protecting social security benefits, increasing local manufacturing jobs, cracking down on price gouging, and making healthcare more affordable . . . There is a very, very strong proactive issue agenda in rural America.”

Rural voting posts bigger percentage than urban or metro in Texas primaries

Graph by The Daily Yonder, from New York Times data

Texas election primaries last week drew a big turnout, with a surprising number of rural voters showing up at the polls. "Texas primary voters turned out in striking numbers this week, with early voting fueling a surge that dominated state headlines," reports Madeline de Figueiredo of The Daily Yonder. "Compared to their urban and suburban counterparts, a greater share of rural voters cast their ballots in the Texas primaries this year."

Both parties had dramatic challenges for seats that will be highly competitive in the November elections. De Figueiredo writes, "Major outlets reported record-breaking Democratic participation in a closely-watched Senate showdown between U.S. Representative Jasmine Crockett and State Representative James Talarico."

Republican voters had a hard time choosing between U.S. Sen. John Cornyn and state Attorney General Ken Paxton. Since neither Cornyn nor Paxton received a majority, their contest moves to a runoff in May.

Amid the surge in voter engagement, rural counties led the charge. "About 26% of registered rural voters showed up to the polls on Tuesday, the highest turnout rate among all county types," the Yonder reports. "The majority of votes were cast in the Democratic primary, the first time this has occurred since the 2020 presidential primary."

The number of ballots cast across the Lone Star State in the primaries increased "47% compared to the last midterm elections in 2022," de Figueiredo writes.

Although suburban and urban voters posted the largest gains in voter turnout, rural counties still "posted the highest turnout percentage among all county types," the Yonder reports.

Energized voting bases and increased population were both cited as reasons for the increase in voter turnout.

Supreme Court's ruling on mail-in ballot deadlines could have an outsized impact in rural areas

Both Republicans and Democrats have large numbers
of voters who mail their ballots. (Adobe Stock photo)

The U.S. Supreme Court plans to rule on mail-in ballot deadlines this term, which could have an outsized impact on a subset of voters, including thousands of rural voters, should the court decide that ballots arriving after Election Day must be tossed.

The case centers on a Mississippi law that allows mailed ballots to be counted even when they arrive after Election Day, but roughly "18 states and territories accept such late-arriving ballots as long as they are postmarked by Election Day," report Nick Corasaniti and Christine Zhang of The New York Times.

Should the court decide that all votes must be received by Election Day, mail-in voters from rural areas will be challenged to mail their votes early enough to be counted.

Voters in the southwestern town of Medford, Oregon, provide a good example. When a Medford voter mails a ballot from the local post office, it doesn't go to the "town clerk’s office only a few miles away," the Times reports. "Instead, it travels about 280 miles north on Interstate 5 to Portland, to get a postmark stamped, before returning to the Medford elections office to be counted."

Rural mail services are also more likely to be delayed by local weather conditions or traffic bottlenecks due to bad weather or natural disasters far from their zip codes.

States with sprawling rural areas and high electoral college numbers, such as California, Texas, Illinois, and New York, currently allow late-arriving ballots to be counted. Should the Supreme Court ax that allowance, both parties could see Election Day impacts.

No matter what the Supreme Court decides, ongoing election education can remind citizens how and when to vote. David Becker, from the Center for Election Innovation and Research, told the Times, "For people who are voting once every four years, or once every two years, they’re not familiar with all these procedures and changes."

Democrats announce plan to 'win over voters in rural areas.'

It could take years for Democrats to see rural voter
 gains. (Adobe Stock photo)

In a bid to change its relationship with rural voters, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee announced a first-of-its-kind investment to "win over voters in rural areas — where the party has suffered deep losses in recent elections — in their effort to win a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives next year," reports Ashley Lopez of NPR.

Committee members see the U.S. economy as a topic they can use to engage Trump-supporting and leaning rural voters by showing that Democrats have something better to offer.

Suzan DelBene, who chairs the DCCC, told Lopez, "I think Republicans are turning their back. They've been actively hurting rural communities with the policies they've put in place."

Anthony Flaccavento, co-founder and executive director of the Rural Urban Bridge Initiative, said "economic frustration among most voters could provide an opening for Democrats, and that rural voters tend to align with economically populist policies," Lopez explains.

While Democrats plan their eight-figure investment to make inroads with rural American voters through targeted campaigns and staff focused on rural issues, it's impossible to predict whether they will be able to generate a meaningful shift in rural opinion in the near future.

Lopez reports, "Flaccavento said winning back at least a slice of those rural voters is likely to be 'hard as hell' for Democrats. But, he said, it's a problem the party needs to confront head-on." Flaccavento is pushing for Democrats to make long-term investments in rural races over the next decade, not just the next couple of election cycles. 

Defying the odds, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez appears close to 2nd term in the House; she wants Democrats to change

Perez helped her constituents recover more than $3 million from federal agencies.

U.S. Representative Marie Gluesenkamp Perez would like Democrats to take a long look in the mirror and reconsider who they're villainizing and how that tactic has alienated voters. "For two years, Representative Perez, a Democrat from a rural, red district in Washington State, has been criticizing her party for being too dismissive of working-class voters," reports Annie Karni of The New York Times. "[She] says her party needs to stop demonizing others and change the candidates it supports."

Perez is a young, plain-spoken Democrat who is close to winning her second term in Congress after a neck-and-neck race. "Long considered perhaps the most vulnerable Democrat in the House, [Perez] defied the odds. . . . Even with President-elect Donald J. Trump at the top of the ticket and winning her district for the third cycle in a row . . . ," Karni writes. "She declared victory in a statement after a newspaper in her district called the election for her, although The Associated Press had yet to do so."

In the Q&A below, Perez shares some of her thoughts on her election and where she thinks Democrats should go from here. For the full interview, click here.

Karni: How did [you win], and what can Democrats learn from you?
Perez: I just refused to let this race be nationalized. It’s not about the message. It’s about my loyalty to my community. The fundamental mistake people make is condescension. A lot of elected officials get calloused to the ways that they’re disrespecting people.

Karni: How do you feel about the re-election of Donald J. Trump?
Perez: I guess I’m still wrapping my head around where to go and what to do. But even when the national current changes, we still have all the same issues here.

Karni: What were your thoughts about Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign?
Perez: When Harris first came out, I was open to talking with her. I know she called a lot of my colleagues; she never called me. I’ve had one interaction with Harris, at her Naval Observatory Christmas party. . . . I noticed that almost all of the garlands were plastic. My district grows a hell of a lot of Christmas trees. I was strong-armed into taking a picture. I said, 'Madam Vice President, we grow those where I live. ' She just walked away from me. There was kind of an eye roll, maybe. My thinking was, it does matter to people where I live. It’s the respect, the cultural regard for farmers."

Karni: Do you think the Democratic Party will be forced to change after this crushing election cycle?
Perez: It’s a lot easier to look outward, to blame and demonize other people, instead of looking in the mirror and seeing what we can do. It is not fun to feel accountability. It requires a mental flexibility that’s painful. So who knows?

Opinion: Scholars have been asking the wrong question about what's 'wrong' with rural voters

What's wrong with American rural voters? Maybe the question is the problem, reports Emma Goldberg for The New York Times.

Kristin Lunz Trujillo

Kristin Lunz Trujillo grew up on her family's farm in rural Minnesota, and although her parents did go to college, they encouraged her to attend. During Trujillo's undergraduate years, she experienced new and somewhat confusing culture shocks. Goldberg explains, "She was dismayed when she checked out the farm club and learned that its members wanted to brew kombucha, not milk cows." During an art class, when the teacher "asked students which famous paintings they’d seen in person, Trujillo stayed quiet. She had never been to an art museum."

As Trujillo headed into graduate school, her earlier "sense of cultural alienation molded her research," Goldberg reports. As a political scientist, she has sought to understand what rural identity is and how it defines political choices. Recently, Trujillo was reading a "best-selling book that cited her research to explore those questions. But this recognition didn’t bring the thrill she might have expected."

Penguin RH photo

Trujillo was reading White Rural Rage by journalist Paul Waldman and political scientist Tom Schaller. The book "is an unsparing assessment of small-town America," Goldberg explains. "Rural residents, the authors argued, are more likely than city dwellers to excuse political violence, and they pose a threat to American democracy." Trujillo told Goldberg her thoughts on Waldman and Schaller's work, "It seemed to be more of a hit piece on rural America."

In her opinion for Newsweek, Trujillo said the book was "'a prime example of how intellectuals sow distrust by villainizing people unlike them,'" Goldberg reports. "This latest effort [by Waldman and Schaller] provoked a response that was swift and scathing and revealed something new: the existence of a tight-knit group of scholars who are clamoring for more empathetic political analyses of rural Americans."

Even though some academics were raised in rural America, as scholars, their identity and questions can drift away from the experience. Nick Jacobs, a political scientist at Colby College and co-author of The Rural Voter, told Goldberg, "We contribute to the further denigration of expertise when we say, ‘This is what the experts say about these rubes and bumpkins.' Who’s going to trust the experts when that’s what the experts have to say about you?”

Overall, rural Americans "see free trade and the rise of new technologies as hurting their communities while helping cities prosper, Jacobs said. . . . . The resentment they felt toward urbanites didn’t come out of nowhere," Goldberg writes. "Jacobs differentiated that resentment from the idea of 'rural rage.' . . . And while resentment, like rage, doesn’t easily dissolve, he suggests that trying to understand where it comes from could start to build a bridge over that ever-widening urban-rural divide."

A snapshot of Trump's Pennsylvania win: Most rural voters stuck with Trump, and some major metro voters went red

Graph by Sarah Melotte, The Daily Yonder

Heading into the presidential election, Pennsylvania was a key swing state. But on Election Day, voters across the state, including more rural residents, voted red, helping Donald Trump secure his second presidency.

"Donald Trump reclaimed Pennsylvania and the presidency on Tuesday when the urban coalition that gave Joe Biden his 2020 victory in the state failed to show up for Vice President Kamala Harris," report Sarah Melotte and Tim Marema for The Daily Yonder. "Trump won the state by 171,000 votes, primarily by eroding Democratic turnout in the major metropolitan areas of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh."

Even though Trump's metro gains were slight, when paired with Harris' poor performance in those same areas, it was enough to turn the tide. "Trump earned about 30,000 more votes this year than he did in 2020 in those same counties in and around Philadelphia and Pittsburgh," Melotte and Marema explain. "Harris earned 89,000 fewer votes in these major metropolitan areas than Biden did in 2020. . . . The difference was determinative in a state that both candidates needed to win the Electoral College vote."

Trump also prevailed in the state's "small rural areas and medium-sized cities," the Yonder reports. "And he improved on his 2020 performance in doing so. . . . Rural counties saw the least shift to Trump from 2020 to 2024, but that’s partly because his margin was already so high. Trump won 73.4% of the rural Pennsylvania vote this year, compared to 72.5% in 2020."

Graph by Sarah Melotte, The Daily Yonder

Despite lower gains in rural areas, Trump added to his 2020 numbers. "Trump improved his percentage of the rural vote in Pennsylvania by less than a percentage point compared to 2020. Trump picked up about 17,000 additional votes compared to 2020, while Harris lost about 2,100 compared to Biden’s performance in 2020," Melotte and Marema add. "Trump won rural counties by over 45 points."

The presidential race isn't top dog in Montana; both parties have eyes and ads fixed on the state's U.S. Senate race.

Tim Sheehy

Montana's heated senate race between incumbent Sen. Jon Tester (D-Montana) and first-time Republican candidate Tim Sheehy has put the presidential race in the rearview mirror. "The state is focused on a race that could determine control of the U.S. Senate, and the next president’s ability to get their agenda through Congress," report Rhonda Colvin, Ross Godwin and Whitney Shefte of The Washington Post. "On the ground, it is still a door-to-door, vote-to-vote fight to the finish, with historical levels of ad spending and an intense focus on Native American voters and potential ticket-splitters."

Native Americans comprise the sparsely populated state's largest minority voting block, but many are not registered voters. Ronnie Jo Horse, executive director of Western Native Voice, a statewide social welfare nonprofit, told the Post, "I think they are getting to know their power. We have 37,000 unregistered voters. Once people find that out and know that Montana wins elections on 3,000 votes, you can see their eyes get big and surprised.”

Jon Tester

Tester won the state's last three elections "partly because of support from Native voters and this year, the Montana Democratic Party announced a multimillion campaign focused on keeping their support," Colvin, Godwin and Shefte explain. "But Native turnout in the state has seen a downturn in recent elections" Republicans see Sheehy "as one of their best chances to unseat a Democrat and add to their numbers — and recent polls suggest they have some momentum."

Meanwhile, the intense campaigning has left some voters worn out from constant political chatter. "Montanans have been under a deluge of inescapable appeals for their vote. . . . The total ad spending from both sides in the race since January 2023 and planned until Election Day will come in at $275 million," the Post reports. Ad-weary Montana voter Machaela Goggins told the Post, “It feels like borderline psychological abuse. . . . I think people are just ready to have an answer one way or another."