Winning Back Rural Voters

Much of the 2026 battleground is in rural America. In a normal year, this would be a killing field for Democrats. Rural voters turned hard against Democrats in 2016. Trump's political success comes from his ability to flip rural voters who had backed Obama twice and to juice turnout to levels no one had seen before.

This year could be different. For a variety of reasons, Democrats have a generational opportunity to make inroads with rural voters. More precisely, it's not an opportunity; it's a necessity. The path to the Senate runs through states with large rural populations, including Iowa, Texas, Ohio, Alaska, and Maine.

New research offers a roadmap for how Democrats can make gains. For this strategy memo, I'm drawing on a new survey of rural voters from the AP and KFF, as well as focus groups Navigator Research conducted with Iowa farmers.

One important note: this sample is very Republican, which matches the partisanship of rural America.

The rural economy has been struggling for a long time. When I worked on races in the Dakotas more than twenty years ago, rural voters worried their way of life was disappearing because their communities had no good jobs for their kids. They were angry that Big Ag and other powerful interests were making it impossible to make a living as an independent farmer. Remember, many of these families have farmed this land or lived in these communities for generations.