Politics
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 Blue Light News 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 Blue Light News’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.”
President Donald Trump is tentatively set to visit Alabama for a political rally next week, a curious move in a deep-red state as his party fights for control of Congress in several battlegrounds.
The event is penciled in for Oct. 2 in Mobile, but the plans have not yet been finalized and are subject to change, according to two people with direct knowledge of the preparations who were granted anonymity to disclose private planning.
An October rally in Alabama would be a somewhat confounding decision for the president. The GOP has found itself having to play defense in their own territory recently, with Democratic candidates are seriously competing for Senate seats in normally red states like Alaska and Texas. But Alabama has not been considered a state where Democrats have any real shot at winning any statewide office.
Spokespeople for the White House and Republican National Committee did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The rally could help shore up support for state Rep. Rhett Marques, who is locked in a somewhat competitive race with Democratic Rep. Shomari Figures. Marques is still seen to have the advantage after the Supreme Court allowed the state to use a House map that reconfigured Figures’ majority-Black district earlier this year. Mobile, though, is outside of that district.
Marques’ campaign and Figures’ campaign did not respond to requests for comment.
A foray into Alabama would not be the first time that the president has tried to shore up support in a solidly Republican state this cycle — he rallied last month in South Carolina for Sen. Darline Graham during her primary runoff — but as the general election season has begun he has also started to visit battleground states. Last week, he rallied alongside GOP Senate nominee Michael Whatley in North Carolina.
Trump’s potential campaign visit would follow Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy’s announcement last week that the Trump administration has granted a $2.5 billion loan to the Alabama Toll Road, Bridge, and Tunnel Authority. That money will fund the construction of the Mobile River Bridge — the largest infrastructure project in the state’s history. The president is also fond of GOP Rep. Barry Moore, who is running for Senate in the state. Another close ally, Sen. Tommy Tuberville, is the Republican nominee for governor. He’s running against Democratic former Sen. Doug Jones, who he unseated in 2020.
Politics
Young men are swinging away hard from Republicans, pessimistic about economy, new poll finds
Republicans’ 2024 gains among young men have evaporated — and that could have instant ramifications this November, according to a new Cygnal poll.
President Donald Trump narrowly carried young men in 2024, according to exit polls, a big swing toward the GOP from past elections. But Democrats’ generic ballot lead among male likely voters ages 18-30 now sits at 57%-40%, according to the new survey.
Trump’s favorability is underwater at just 38%-55%, and Republicans’ net favorability among the demographic now sits at -9 points, with 40% viewing the party favorably and 49% unfavorably.
One silver lining for the GOP: Among all registered voters sampled, including those least likely to turn out in November, the Democratic generic ballot lead is much smaller, 44% to 41%.
“It is not a very good electorate, if you’re the Republican Party, among the people who are the most determined to vote,” said Alex Tarascio, pollster and principal at Cygnal, in an interview with Blue Light News ahead of the poll’s release during Thursday’s Symposium on Young American Men.
Young men alone likely won’t determine control of Congress; they make up a fraction of the electorate, and they are less likely to vote than women of the same age or their older counterparts. But that lack of enthusiasm itself is a warning sign for Republicans, who will need to motivate their base ahead of November if they wish to maintain control of Congress.
The young men sampled are overwhelmingly concerned about cost-of-living issues — the same reason that many swung toward the GOP two years ago.
When given a list of options and asked which will matter most in determining their vote in November, a wide plurality — 29% — selected “inflation and the cost of living,” and another 14% chose “housing costs and being able to afford a place to live.” When asked what policies would make the biggest difference in their lives, the top answers again deal with the economy: The most-selected options were lowering the cost of goods, lowering housing costs and cutting taxes.
Many young men feel pessimistic about their ability to achieve success. When asked if they feel the rules in this country are set up to work for or against young men, 43% said they feel the rules are set up against them to 47% who said the rules are set up in their favor.
That pessimism bleeds into how they view other institutions. Both the Democratic Party (-1) and Republican Party (-9) have net-negative favorability among the demographic, and the White House’s current occupants are even more unpopular: Vice President JD Vance sits at 37% favorability with -10 net favorability, while Trump is at 38% favorability with -17 net.
“Young men are pretty down on institutions and political figures, and this one isn’t any exception to that,” Tarascio said.
Republicans successfully targeted young men and low-propensity voters in 2024 to help propel them to victory largely in part by having Trump sit for interviews with podcast hosts and influencers popular with young men. Trump has yet to return to those forums en masse ahead of the midterms, but he’s repeatedly told voters to pretend as if he’s on the ballot in November.
But Trump may no longer be the motivator he once was for turning out young, male, low-propensity voters. Among those surveyed who were least likely to vote, Trump’s net favorability is -22, lower than the respondents most likely to vote, where his net favorability is -19.
“If Trump gets in front of them, I don’t think it’s a bad bet, but for some of these people it could backfire,” Tarascio said.
The poll was conducted Sept. 15-18 with a sample of 800 registered male voters ages 18-30. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.46 percentage points.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee is shifting its focus away from the North Carolina and Georgia Senate races as it works to shore up red states like Texas and flip other Democratic-held seats.
In a closed-door meeting Wednesday, Sen. Tim Scott, the chair of the NRSC, told Senate Republicans that the campaign arm will focus its spending going forward on defending GOP seats in Maine, Alaska, Ohio, Iowa and Texas and trying to flip the Democratic-held seats of Michigan and New Hampshire, according to four people in the room who were granted anonymity to share private details.
That list notably leaves out North Carolina GOP nominee Michael Whatley’s battle against Democrat Roy Cooper and Georgia GOP nominee Mike Collins’ effort to unseat Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff.
Scott’s briefing is the clearest sign yet that Republicans have deprioritized the two states, as POLITICO has reported, while senior Republicans grow increasingly resigned to the possibility of losing those races. It’s a remarkable shift: President Donald Trump carried Georgia twice in 2016 and 2024 and North Carolina over the last three presidential elections.
In deprioritizing North Carolina, the NRSC is effectively ceding a state that Democrats haven’t won in the Senate since 2008.
Still, other GOP groups with massive war chests, including Trump’s MAGA Inc., could pick up the slack.
Scott also shared with the senators polling showing Republicans are locked in tight battles in several other key races, which tracks with much of the public polling, according to the four people.
For example, one poll found that GOP Sen. Jon Husted of Ohio is still trailing former Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown. Scott also showed polling indicating Republican John Sununu is essentially neck-and-neck with Democratic Rep. Chris Pappas in New Hampshire, a seat Republicans are laser-focused on trying to flip.
NRSC did not respond to a request for comment. Neither did Collins’ campaign.
“As Roy Cooper said earlier this year about U.S. Senate races in North Carolina, ‘Democrats are often ahead until they are not.’ And then just last week Cooper, correctly, observed, ‘We know a lot of undecided voters lean Republican.’ We’re confident we will have the resources to get our message out to North Carolina voters and win,” said Whatley Spokesman DJ Griffin in a statement.
Georgia GOP party chair Josh McKoon dismissed the notion that his state was being deprioritized by Republicans in Washington, even as he acknowledged beating Ossoff will be a challenge.
“Every cycle, someone in Washington leaks that they’re thinking about moving money,” he said in a text message. “What matters is who shows up — and what the actual numbers say.”
Senate Majority Leader John Thune is set to headline a fundraiser for Collins in Atlanta on Thursday, alongside the state’s popular Republican governor, Brian Kemp. The Collins campaign is also making the case that one in 10 Georgia voters — who backed Trump in 2024 and plan to vote for Jackson — are still “up for grabs,” according to a memo obtained by POLITICO.
“The goal in Georgia is to strike a balance where you are spending as little for Senate as possible while not derailing Rick Jackson’s, so far, very strong bid for Governor in a difficult environment,” said a GOP pollster granted anonymity to speak candidly about the landscape. Public polling shows the governor’s race has much tighter margins, with Jackson leading Democratic nominee Keisha Lance Bottoms in some recent surveys.
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who lost his Senate primary to Trump-backed Ken Paxton, was also in the room. He later told Blue Light News that the party has to make tough decisions.
“At some point I think the people spending that money are going to have to make hard choices and figure out where the money can have the biggest impact, and certainly Texas is the most expensive,” Cornyn said.
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