Democrats spy rare opening in rural America

Democrats are accustomed to losing in rural America — especially to Donald Trump. Now they’re hoping the president’s own policies might prove to be the leverage they need going into next year’s midterms.

The party faces immense challenges in farm country that have overwhelmingly voted Republican for decades and turned out in droves on the president’s behalf three times. But over the past year, those same communities have borne the brunt of his tariff agenda, health care center closures, lingering inflation and cuts to public lands programs.

Where Trump sees an “A++++++” economy, large percentages of both Republican and Democratic voters blame his decisions for stubbornly high prices for groceries and housing, according to recent polling from POLITICO and Public First.

Democrats have a long way to go in rebuilding trust with rural voters. But conversations with more than a dozen current and former Democratic lawmakers, party officials and political strategists suggest they also feel the urgency of tapping into the discontent being generated by Trump’s agenda.

The party is trying to replace wishful thinking with a new shoe-leather strategy in rural communities where it has long lacked a presence and is deploying unhappy farmers in media campaigns. If Democrats mean to retake Congress in the midterms or have a shot at the White House in 2028, their candidates don't necessarily need to sweep rural counties — they just need to eat into the margins Trump was getting, which were frequently north of 80 percent of the vote.

“We have a unique opening because of all that's happening with this administration,” said Rep. Nikki Budzinski (D-Ill.), whose district includes significant rural and farming interests. Farmers and rural voters “might be listening in a more unique way than they maybe have ever in the past. And we need to walk through that door.”

Democrats have previously dedicated relatively modest amounts of money, staff and advertising to rural counties and districts outside of swing states. But after a string of off-year victories last month, House Democrats have launched their first-ever rural outreach program, an eight-figure campaign that will fund efforts to hire staffers for candidates, mobilize voters and run ads focusing on the cost of living.

Even some Republicans acknowledge the GOP can’t take rural communities for granted.

“Right now, the farm community is with [Trump]. I think the thing that Republicans should worry about is enthusiasm, in getting out and actually voting,” Senate Agriculture Committee Chair John Boozman (R-Ark.) said. “It's one thing to be supportive, it's another thing to actually go vote on Election Day.”

Joe Manchin, a Democrat-turned-independent former senator and governor, won six statewide races running as a Democrat in solid-red West Virginia. He said the party needs to focus on finding candidates who can relate to rural Americans by focusing on key issues — “common sense shit,” he explained, like fiscal responsibility and affordability.

For example, candidates like Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill won their gubernatorial elections last month by distancing themselves from the Democratic Party’s brand and zeroing in on high prices.

“They're the kind of the centrist Democrats you need,” Manchin said. “They're the only ones who are going to win in these tough areas.”

The tariff play

The politics that defines much of the division between urban and rural voters emerged in the late 1980s, as post-Carter Democrats pushed policies that the latter saw as detrimental to agricultural and manufacturing sectors. That left rural voters especially primed for Trump’s brand of economic populism: He won 64 percent of them in 2024, the best performance of any presidential candidate in decades and beating his own 2016 margin.

"One of the reasons we were in such a negative place with rural voters is we sort of ceded that ground, stopped showing up, stopped talking to these folks, and really relied on the urban centers," Libby Schneider, deputy executive director of the Democratic National Committee, said. “And we saw how that gamble failed in 2024 when folks in urban centers stayed home.”

Then, in April, Trump began his chaotic tariff rollout.

While farmers had stomached Trump’s tariffs in the first term — and voted to bring him back in 2024 — their economic position is weaker and the tariffs are much higher and more expansive this time around.

Farmers and businesses experienced whiplash as tariff deadlines came and went, confusing people throughout the food supply chain about how they would be impacted. Fertilizer and fuel costs rose and markets for exports like soybeans dried up. Some groups, including cattle ranchers who have long allied with Trump, publicly broke with the president's trade agenda when he suggested importing Argentinian beef to lower food prices.

While most rural voters are not farmers, agriculture is a critical piece of the rural economy, making farm policy one of the primary ways federal policymaking affects those communities. Some voters may support tariffs in theory in the hopes they could revitalize the labor market and prompt fairer trade terms for farm goods, but polling suggests they view Trump's plans as too arbitrary to achieve those goals.

A majority of people surveyed in an October POLITICO poll (53 percent) supported avoiding tariffs on imports if that meant keeping costs low for consumers.

Spanberger, the Virginia governor-elect, won in part by focusing her messaging in rural counties on tariffs and tying the economic discomfort voters were feeling to Trump and the Republican Party. She outperformed Kamala Harris in 48 of Virginia’s 52 rural localities.

National Democrats, excited by Spanberger’s success, have made their own moves: Beyond the DCCC’s eight-figure investment into rural voters and voters of color and the new farmer-focused ad campaigns, a caucus of more than 100 moderate Democratic lawmakers recently released a policy agenda that includes passing a farm bill, expanding rural broadband funding and federal funding for local food purchases.

White House spokesperson Kush Desai defended the Trump administration’s policies and said “supporting rural Americans has been a key focus,” which is why the administration has sought to use tariffs to open up new export markets for farmers.

The RNC isn’t fazed either.

"Rural America won't suddenly be tricked into thinking elite Democrats stand for their beliefs and values. The DNC spending a few bucks won't fool rural Americans into thinking Democrats have touched grass,” RNC spokesperson Delanie Bomar said.

One Big Beautiful Mess

Trump’s signature tax-and-spending law provides Democrats with another opening to contrast their pitch against Republicans.

Rural health care centers across the country have already shuttered in response to the law’s Medicaid cuts, which will disproportionately hit communities where hospitals are few and often primary employers. Low-income Americans are quickly learning they may no longer qualify for federal food aid — even as most of the tax breaks the GOP has touted will benefit the wealthy.

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, who chairs the Democratic Governors Association and represents a ruby red state, recently called the law “a slap in the face to rural America.”

And POLITICO’s November poll revealed that voters are more likely to rely on Democrats when it comes to health care policy. More than 40 percent of those surveyed said they trusted Democrats to bring down health care costs for ordinary Americans, compared with 33 percent who said they trusted the GOP.

The message for Democrats is “wrapped up and with a nice, tidy bow on it in the Big, Beautiful Bill,” said Christopher Borick, a political science professor who runs the Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion. “It's cuts to your health care, it's cuts to rural hospitals. It's cuts to SNAP benefits, and it's just so tidy and neat for Democrats to go there.”

The strategy seems to be working. In a heavily Republican congressional district in Tennessee, Democrat Aftyn Behn beat expectations and outperformed Harris' 2024 margins in a bid to unseat GOP Rep. Matt Van Epps this month.

Behn’s ads largely focused on affordability and the fallout from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which she called the “one big BS bill.”

That tactic resonated with voters in an off-cycle election and will only gain steam: Americans' health care premiums are set to skyrocket ahead of the 2026 midterms after Republicans declined to extend Covid-era “enhanced” subsidies of Affordable Care Act plans in their big bill.

Will history repeat itself?

Still, some political experts question how much Democrats can loosen the GOP's hold on rural America.

The president's first-term tariff war also hammered farmers, but their political ties to Republicans hardly wavered at the time. Democrats in 2024 used roughly the same playbook they’re seeking to capitalize on now, arguing that Trump’s proposed policies would increase the cost of living and that his tariffs would impose a new tax on the middle class — but they failed to gain enough ground with rural voters, enabling Republicans to win a trifecta.

Many voters are wary of Democrats’ support for free trade agreements over the last 30 years, which hollowed out rural job opportunities and allowed the unchecked growth of corporate power, said Anthony Flaccavento, executive director of the Rural Urban Bridge initiative, a progressive rural organizing group.

“Both parties have really betrayed rural America, but the Republican Party got very, very good at seeing people and expressing solidarity and saying, ‘You're right to be angry,'” he explained.

Part of winning is showing up and listening, say Democrats like Rep. Shontel Brown of Ohio, who is weighing a bid for the top spot on the House Agriculture Committee. Brown, who hails from a wholly urban district, has traveled to other parts of her state and to Florida on a listening tour to hear directly from farmers.

“We've lost a lot of trust in rural America, so showing up and listening is half the battle, but then we have to be able to present an alternative,” she said in a recent interview. "We as Democrats have a real opportunity to make the case for policies that lower costs and make it easier for farmers, families and the entire food supply chain producers as well.”