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As election day grows near, the topic of rural voters is back on the table. Since Donald Trump ascended to the presidency in 2016, pollsters and pundits have been trying to understand the voters who flock to him.
Some of the "answers" that have come from that analysis have led many Democratic Party officials and donors to write off the rural vote, placing their chips elsewhere. This year, many Democratic donors have been slow to open their checkbooks altogether, sensing a bloodbath at the polls. Then, when all seemed doomed, Kansans, who supported Trump over Biden by nearly 15 points in 2020, voted to uphold protections in the state constitution for the right to an abortion.
While the majority of rural Kansans voted against the right to choose, the numbers were closer than most expected, and the pro-abortion rights vote far outpaced Biden's 2020 numbers in rural Kansas. President Biden got 17 percent of the vote in Russel County in 2020, but 45 percent voted in support of abortion rights in August. As the Kansas City Star reported, in some rural counties the majority of voters cast their ballot against the amendment altogether. Osage, a county with 11,900 registered voters, has not supported a Democrat since Lyndon B. Johnson. They voted down the referendum 56 percent to 44 percent.
This trend, coupled with student debt forgiveness and prescription drug relief, has Democrats believing they might improve their vote share in key rural counties this November. Seizing this opening will not be easy, especially considering the lack of Democratic Party infrastructure in much of rural America.
This spring I spent a couple of weeks traveling through Wisconsin and Michigan, meeting with rural Democrats, including people who chair county Democratic Parties, hold elected office, as well as diehard rural Democratic Party volunteers. I met tenacious and committed local Democratic leaders, doing all they could to garner votes for Democrats, with the slimmest of resources.
They were fighting to keep local offices open, scraping money together for the occasional ad, and raising hell with party leaders to get yard signs out to rural areas. One local leader was spending down his savings to keep the local office open. A few county parties had recently received $500 grants from Movement Labs, an organization supporting rural Democratic leaders, and you would have thought they had won the lottery. This is maddening when you know many party consultants make that much or more in a single hour.
This disinvestment is driven by three mistakes that many Democratic leaders and donors make when thinking about how the rural vote fits within the larger coalition. The first is taking existing rural Democrats for granted.
In 2008, Barack Obama won 43 percent of the rural vote. In 2016, Hillary Clinton won just over 30 percent of the rural vote. Biden moved those numbers up, barely, in the states that mattered most. Winning statewide elections, in many states, is not possible without picking up a significant number of rural votes.
While the goal for Democrats is to improve their showing in rural areas, just holding the numbers they have now is not a given. The sad truth is that unless Democrats and the progressive ecosystem decide to contest for rural voters, we have not hit bottom—not even close. If numbers in rural districts that hover in the 67 percent Republican to 33 percent Democrat range expand to an 80-20 margin, it would be game over for statewide races in Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and many other states.
The next mistake is believing that rural white voters are immovable, or only moving rightward.
In 2018, the two groups that had the largest swing from supporting Republicans in 2016 to Democrats in the midterms, were single white women—a 17-point swing—and white people, age 18-29—a 16-point swing. These two groups could play a big role in November, if Democrats are in conversation with and mobilizing them.
The third mistake is the belief that rural America is white America. While rural America is whiter than the nation as a whole, it is much more diverse than most realize. Of the more than 100 counties in the country that are majority Black, almost all are in the South, and are very rural or inclusive of rural areas. Latinos are far and away the fastest growing ethnic group in rural America, with millions of Latinos moving to rural areas since 2000. Meanwhile, more than half of the nation's Native Americans live in rural communities.
As we saw in 2020, taking rural and small-town Latinos for granted, as well as treating them as a monolith, is a mistake. There were signs of this in 2016, as rural majority Latino counties moved rightward. Then in 2020, the chicken came home to roost, as longtime Democratic strongholds along the Rio Grande flipped from blue to red.
My trip to meet rural Democrats was inspired by a meeting I participated in with a dozen rural party leaders from a handful of states. During the meeting, one of the county chairs shared that their office had been vandalized. The other county chairs nodded, unsurprised by this news. Someone else then mentioned they had received another death threat. Again, nods of acknowledgement. The call organizer paused, and then asked, "who here has received a death threat because of their role in the Democratic Party?" More than half the group raised their hand.
What they don't lack in courage, they do lack in resources. In most meetings, I could barely take my seat in some counties before hearing of the struggle to get even yard signs planted. You might be thinking, "how important can yard signs be?" In a rural area, each yard sign that someone puts up in their yard is a committed vote. In many rural counties, you are taking a social if not physical risk in putting up a pro-Democrat sign. Once you've made this choice, you are definitely going to show up and vote. But the larger value is that these signs show other Democrats that they are not alone and there is a fighting chance.
When asked what they most needed money for, they said it was to raise visibility and demonstrate that there were others in the county who wanted a more just, equitable, and inclusive America. They wanted resources to be able to tell the story of legislation like the American Rescue Plan and how it was helping their county. Others wanted to hire an organizer to support a group of surrounding county parties working together.
The last meeting during my week in Wisconsin was with volunteers of the Walworth County Democratic Party. As the meeting came toward a close, I asked, why do you all stick with it? It sounds so risky and hard. Ellen Holly, who is the County Chair, said, "Here's the thing. If we get enough votes here in 2022 and 2024, and others do the same in their rural counties, we just might save democracy."
Democrats have an opportunity in rural counties in November. There are rural leaders fighting the good fight. Let's hope they get the resources needed to seize the opportunity.
George Goehl is a longtime community and political organizer. Following the election of Donald Trump, he helped build one of the largest progressive rural organizing efforts in the country. He is the former Director of People's Action and the host of the podcast To See Each Other, which tells the story of rural people fighting for social justice.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
