Jeff Bloodworth is an author and professor of American political history at Gannon University. This article is adapted from an article in UnHerd.
“Democrats just don't care what their constituents think,” fumed Eva Posner, a Virginia-based Democratic political consultant, who worries the progressive establishment will pay the price for ignoring rural voters in 2024.
Abandoned by the Democratic Party, rural America has given its soul to the MAGA movement. Donald Trump won 65% of rural voters in 2020, up from 59% in 2016. The 2020 figure was even higher among rural whites, at 71%. The resulting polarization between blue cities and red rural areas is “a by-product of the Democratic Party,” says Matt L. Baron, a principal at MLB Research Associates who specializes in rural Democratic elections. “They're not even trying to compete in rural America.”
In the United States, only one in five people live in a rural area or small town, yet Republicans dominate 23 states with large rural populations. Because of the pro-rural Constitution, Republicans can claim two senators from even the smallest rural states. This results in a nearly equal number of Republicans and Democrats in the Senate, leading to deadlock. Meanwhile, at the state level, rural voters give Republicans nearly twice as many state legislative seats as Democrats. This gives Republicans more influence in the House of Representatives, which is also effectively deadlocked.
But Democrats haven't always been rural pariahs. In the post-World War II era, Democrats routinely won half of the rural congressional votes. In the 1990s, Bill Clinton captured rural America's support, and in 2008, Barack Obama won 43 percent of the rural vote on the strength of a grassroots movement. But Obama took his victory for granted; his activists seemed to believe a Democratic majority was destined, and he hardly needed to organize, canvass, or canvass.
“The Obama crowd came in 2008 and then they went away. There was no follow-up,” Chloe Maxmin, a former Democratic state senator and congresswoman from rural Maine, told me. “Voters felt abandoned.” The percentage of rural voters who identified as Democrats fell from 45% in 2008 to 38% in 2016. Under Obama, Democrats lost 13 Senate seats and 69 House seats, plus 11 governors, 913 state legislators, and 30 state legislative seats. Rural voters were punishing Democrats for their betrayal.
After such a humiliation, can President Biden win back the support of rural America? That would certainly change his electoral prospects. Even a 5 percentage point increase in rural voter support would be a “game changer,” according to Midwest-based Democratic political consultant Adam Kirsch. First, control of Congress would no longer change hands every two years, allowing the Biden administration to advance its policy agenda.
The problem is that rural voters are hard to reach. In the 1990s, liberals largely ceded talk radio to conservatives, which was foolish because radio is essential for connecting with car-loving residents. Soon after, the Internet changed the newspaper economics. Nearly 3,000 U.S. newspapers have closed since 2005. Rural newspapers have been hit especially hard. Today, more than half of U.S. counties have little or no access to local news. And nearly a quarter of rural Americans lack broadband Internet. How can you keep up with Washington politics while living in a media vacuum?
Despite these obstacles, Democrats can make an impact in rural America. They don't even need to win a majority of the rural vote; they just need to close the margin of defeat. Barron cites Arizona's 2020 U.S. Senate race as an example. Democrat Mark Kelly spent about $100 million compared to Republican Martha McSally's $72 million, but Barron says it was $20,000 in rural radio ads that turned the tide. Unlike many past Democratic candidates, Kelly won more than 30% of the vote in all but one rural Arizona county, which was crucial in an election decided by about 78,000 votes.
But political consultants seem wary of this strategy. It seems many of them would rather line their bank accounts than reach out to rural voters and win elections. I've heard from a number of sources that consultants prefer advertising in expensive urban areas over rural areas because of the higher fees. “Our politics has been nationalized by professional operatives. It's become a big industry. It's a money-making game for them to pay for their vacation homes. It's a multi-million dollar pyramid scheme,” said Ricky Cole, former state chairman of the Mississippi Democratic Party.
We hear the same thing over and over again: If Democrats get serious, they can win back rural loyalty. Nebraska Democratic Party Chair Jane Cleave told me that four full-time, paid organizers could make the Cornhusker State a competitive, if not purple, state. But unfortunately, donors fund election consultants more than grassroots organizations. And many election consultants prefer to send mailers to leaflet rural areas rather than pay grassroots activists. This is because, as Posner puts it, “the consultants get a cut of the mailers. They don't consult on actual strategy. They consult and make decisions based on their economic incentives.”
Their incompetence is destroying the party. Without inspiring candidates and local organizations, the party's brand is “nonexistent” in rural America, Kirsch said. Rural voters have come to see the election as “us vs. them, not left vs. right,” and Republicans are successfully appealing to that “us” mentality.
Party leaders seem oblivious to this problem, and a group of local and state Democrats are working to rebuild the rural, grassroots Democratic Party. One of these rebels is Sarah Taber, running for North Carolina agriculture commissioner. An agronomist and former farm worker, Taber calls rural North Carolina “my people,” but acknowledges that in her home state, “it helps to know where you stand as a Democrat.”
Another Democrat working to regain support from rural areas is African-American Ty Pinkins. He is running for the Mississippi Senate seat held by Senator Roger Wicker, a white Republican. It will be a tough fight in a state with strong Republican support, but Cole believes Pinkins will have a good chance if Democrats can increase voter turnout. Cole cites the example of Democrat Brandon Pressley, who lost to Republican Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves by about 27,000 votes in 2023. Cole says the reason for his loss was low voter turnout among African-Americans.
Pinkins seems determined not to let history repeat itself. The slim, youthful-looking 50-year-old politician is an Army veteran who was awarded the Bronze Star and earned a law degree from Georgetown University. Since June 2023, Pinkins said, he has driven 70,000 miles in his black Chevrolet Tahoe and campaigned in 67 of the state's 82 counties. But Pinkins says his real goal is not to win one election, but to build an entire infrastructure to encourage voting. He aims to have a campaign manager in every county and a team leader in all 1,748 precincts in the state.
Can he succeed? Anthony Flaccavento, a farmer from Southwest Virginia who ran for Congress twice as a Democrat and later founded the Rural-Urban Bridge Initiative, told me it's essential for candidates to build trust with rural voters, who often believe Democrats hate them. Pinkins says he understands that. “I see it every day. The moment you approach a voter, you see the look in their eyes. They're eager to tell you what's important to them,” he says.
But trust is a two-way bond, and if Democrats are going to take on MAGA in rural America, they're going to need to trust small-town voters enough to try their luck.
