How Democrats Lost Rural Voters—and How to Win Them Back

In 2008, President Barack Obama made major inroads with rural voters—a feat that Democratic candidates hadn’t been able to achieve since the 1992 and 1996 victories of Bill Clinton. 

Obama won 9 million votes from rural America and flipped 179 rural counties that had voted Republican in 2004. He still lost rural voters 45 percent to 53 percent, but his performance was a big improvement over 2004, when President George W. Bush crushed Democratic candidate John Kerry among rural voters by 19 percentage points. 

No doubt Obama’s appeal played a big part in Democratic gains among rural voters, but substantial credit also belongs to then-Democratic National Committee Chair Howard Dean, whose “50-state strategy” ensured a Democratic presence across the country, including in areas considered “unwinnable.” 

Democrats’ failure to sustain Dean’s strategy has since led to a seemingly unsurmountable deficit with rural voters. Trump won 93 percent of rural counties in 2024 despite a last-minute push by Vice President Kamala Harris to woo rural residents. Rural voters also made up 36 percent of the Trump vote, according to the Pew Research Center, compared to just 16 percent of voters for Harris. 

Political scientists Suzanne Mettler and Trevor Brown argue that Democrats must work to bridge this urban-rural chasm, both for the sake of Democrats’ political fortunes but for the sake of preserving democracy. Mettler and Brown are the authors of the new book, Rural versus Urban: The Growing Divide That Threatens Democracy, excerpted in the November/December issue of the Washington Monthly. Mettler and Brown argue for robust investments in rural America to rebuild the Democratic Party. They also lay out a surprising analysis of why Democrats lost rural voters. 

Suzanne Mettler is Interim Chair & John L. Senior Professor of American Institutions at Cornell University. Trevor Brown is a Postdoctoral Fellow in Moral and Political Economy at Johns Hopkins University. 

This transcript has been edited for length and clarity. The full interview is available at Spotify, YouTube and iTunes. 

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Anne Kim: What prompted you to write this book? When there so many potential political divisions you could have explored, why study rural versus urban?

Suzanne Mettler:  Both of us grew up in rural places, so speaking for myself, I’ve long been curious about what’s going on in rural areas. I grew up in upstate New York, and rural areas now feel really different politically than they did when I was a kid. So I became curious about how that related to the growing polarization that we’re seeing generally in the country.

Trevor Brown: I grew up in a rural county in Ohio. A lot of my friends’ parents voted for Democrats, but it was a fairly politically competitive county. After college, I moved away to a big city, Chicago, and I saw how politics were changing both in rural areas and in increasingly in urban areas. So I became curious in a similar way that Suzanne was.

Garrett Epps: Just to give context, what is a “rural voter”? 

Trevor Brown: We use several different measures, and there are many different ways you can measure “rural.” Primarily, we use a measure by the federal government that demarcates whether or not a county is considered “metro” or “non-metro,” and that has to do with population density and whether or not a county is tied into a large metropolitan area.

One thing we should note too is that we study people who live in rural places. There’s a lot of scholarship out there on “rural identity,” but we actually study people who live in rural areas and not necessarily people who identify as “rural,” which are two different things.

Suzanne Mettler: The percentage of Americans who live in rural places is very small today. Depending upon these measurements, it’s somewhere between 14 percent and 20 percent of Americans. Most Americans these days live in metropolitan places, whether it’s big cities, small cities, or suburban areas. 

Garrett Epps: But as you note, 14 to 20 percent is enough to have a huge political effect if it all goes the same way.

Suzanne Mettler: Yes, because of American electoral institutions, there’s an outsized voice for less populated places. For example, every state gets two senators, regardless of population, even though California has more than 66 times the population of Wyoming. And that’s true of many states that get extra clout in the Senate, even with a very small population. 

It used to be that the parties would balance each other out because one party was dominant in some rural places and the other in other rural places. But today it’s really the Republican party that has come to dominate rural places in the nation.

Anne Kim: You explode a lot of myths about urban versus rural voters, including the myth that urban and rural voters are radically different in their viewpoints. Rather, you find there’s not that much daylight except on a few key issues. What are the defining issues that seem to really differentiate the two groups?

Trevor Brown: A lot of people assume that the difference between rural and urban Americans can be explained by ideological differences on public policy. We show that rural and urban dwellers don’t really differ that much on public policy. We look at things like attitudes towards funding the police or state-level funding for healthcare, and on those issues, there really is no difference. On “culture war” issues, like access to abortion and LGBTQ-related issues, there is a small difference in which rural non-Hispanic whites tend to be slightly more conservative than their urban peers, but the differences are quite small. 

What we argue explains the divide is a three-step process. Starting in the 1990s, place-based inequality began to emerge in which urban places began to grow away from rural places. This was instigated by public policies such as NAFTA and deregulation. And then starting in 2008 through 2020, two processes happened that exacerbated and cemented the divide. The first is that rural non-Hispanic white dwellers begin to view the Democratic Party as a party of overly educated urban elites foisting policies on them. And second, there’s an organizational imbalance where the Republican Party is aided by conservative organizations at the grassroots level—right-to-life organizations, the National Rifle Association, gun groups—whereas the Democratic Party doesn’t really have that. 

The upshot is that it’s really not public opinion. It’s the interplay between what we call “sequential polarization,” where economic dislocation activated two other processes.

Suzanne Mettler:  And that leaves us now in this position where there’s a sense of “us versus them” in our politics and where the people on either side of this rural-urban divide really differ is in their views of the other party. Rural Republicans hold Democrats in great disdain, and urban Democrats hold Republicans in great disdain.

We use these questions called “feeling thermometers,” where people are asked to rank various different groups in society on a scale of zero to 100. When rural Republicans are asked to rank Blacks and Latinos, they’re somewhere up around like 67 percent or 70 percent on the thermometer. When they’re asked about gay people, it’s somewhere around 50 percent. If they’re asked about illegal immigrants, it’s 39 percent. But if they’re asked about Democrats, it’s 14 percent.

By the same token, when urban Democrats are asked a question about Republicans, they’re just a couple of points higher than that in their evaluation. So in other words, people don’t really disagree on issues, but we dislike each other anyway. We’re barely disagreeing, but we’re deeply divided because of this “us versus them” partisanship.

Garrett Epps: If you look at constitutional history in this country, rural events have been hugely important. Arguably the Constitution itself was written because everybody was freaked out by Shays’ Rebellion, which was farmers saying, “You can’t take our land.” Then you had the Whiskey Rebellion, and so on. You talk a great deal about how events in rural America drove the New Deal, and since that’s a success story and one doesn’t want to be depressed all the time, talk a little bit about what FDR did right and what we can learn from that.

Suzanne Mettler:  The first book of my career was about the New Deal, but I wrote that without really thinking much about rural people. So it was very interesting for me to revisit the New Deal and learn about it in a whole new way. What we’ve learned is that Roosevelt built a coalition between rural and urban Americans, and, if anything, put rural Americans front and center. This was true from the beginning of his campaign when he was running for president the first time. He recruited this brain trust of rural experts, agricultural economists and so on, and they had a whole policy agenda for rural areas. He gave all of these speeches about what he thought was really the root of the Great Depression, which was inequality and the suffering of farmers. And he kept talking about the interdependence between rural and urban areas. So then he comes into office with a whole policy agenda with everything from help for farmers to stabilize prices on up through rural electrification. 

All of these policies were very consequential, and they were politically important in that rural people in many parts of the country credited the Democratic Party with having saved their families in that era. They remembered it for decades later on and passed that confidence in the Democratic Party onto their children. People had the view that the Democratic Party stands up for the common person, for the working person. 

That came apart in the 1990s. In our interviews with county chairs, a Republican in Southern Ohio said to us that it used to seem like the Democrats were for the working man, but it doesn’t seem that way anymore. So somehow that faith was lost.

But at the same time, what this shows is that this rural-urban divide is not inevitable. And it took both policy and political work of party-building to overcome it.

Anne Kim: If you spend any time on Bluesky, or any of these places where progressives gather, a lot of them would probably argue that Democrats are doing a lot for rural voters. “Look at all the Medicaid money that flows into red states,” and “Why are they voting against their own interests?” “What’s the matter with Kansas?” But clearly the Democratic Party is still doing something wrong despite their support for policies that may have outsized impact in rural areas. What is it Democrats are getting wrong today that’s very different from what FDR did back in the days of the New Deal?

Suzanne Mettler: Well, you’re right that, in fact, rural areas benefit quite a lot from federal social welfare policies. And it’s true also that the Biden administration did more probably than any administration since FDR to really channel resources toward rural areas. And yet, there doesn’t seem to have been an electoral benefit—at least not an immediate one. So what’s going wrong? 

We think the issue is organizing and party building. That just has not happened sufficiently. We went to rural counties that have changed the most politically since the 1990s, and wonderful people were willing to talk with us—these county chairs. Typically the Democratic county chairs were older people. They would tell us stories about how if they joined the party and they were a 65-year-old, they were the youngest person there and immediately asked to become an officer. Before they know it, they’re the county chair.

These are volunteers, and they’re working really hard, but they’re facing an uphill battle because of all the things we’re talking about. It’s made the party weaker over time. 

And they don’t enjoy the support of groups. These days, the Republicans are helped by evangelical churches that connect the dots for voters and convey to them, “Here’s the party that is working on behalf of you, your values, et cetera.” Gun groups affiliated with the National Rifle Association do this. 

Democrats used to have organized labor that was doing that kind of work for them, and organized labor was pretty strong in a lot of rural areas in the past. But that’s no longer the case because of deindustrialization and the weakening of labor. And so with each election, Democrats have are trying to start from the ground up. They’re not getting support from the state party or the national party to do that kind of organizing.

Garrett Epps: I think another question that comes to mind when you read about the seeming intransigence of this divide is extent to which race and ethnicity play a part. 

Trevor Brown: The rural-urban political divide is driven almost entirely by non-Hispanic white voters. Rural and urban non-Hispanic white voters since the 1990s have sharply diverged. Meanwhile, African-Americans in rural and urban areas still vote for Democrats and Republicans at roughly similar rates, and the same could be said of Latino or Hispanic voters. So this is largely driven by non-Hispanic whites. 

And that raises the question, well, what role does racism play? We find that anti-Black racism in particular does matter, but it’s only one part of a broader story. 

I mentioned the second phase in this process we call “sequential polarization,” starting in 2008 through 2020, where the Democratic Party begins to be viewed as a party of urban elites by rural whites. We also used a question that asks about support for government aid to African-Americans to show that anti-Black racism among non-Hispanic whites was triggered in 2008 through 2020, and that helped solidify the divide. So anti-Black racism does matter, but it’s only a small piece of the broader puzzle that we seek to sort out.

Anne Kim: I wonder if Democrats’ perception of anti-Black racism among rural whites is connected to the lack of party infrastructure by Democrats. I feel that many Democrats have just given up on rural voters. You had both President Barack Obama talking about this population as being “bitter” and “clinging to guns and religion,” which is a pretty disdainful comment, to be honest, and then Hillary Clinton talks about the “basket of deplorables.” It seems that a lot of Democrats have simply washed their hands of trying to do outreach, thinking that this population is unwinnable, unreasonable, racist anyway, etc. Why is it important that both parties be competitive in rural areas? What is wrong with the Democratic perspective to focus on blue areas and try to shore up support there?

Suzanne Mettler:  I really appreciate how you’ve connected the fact that Democrats have not been organizing energetically and giving national party support to rural places. It makes rural people feel more resentful of the party, and it makes them feel they don’t care about people like us. They seem to be caring about other groups. They care about groups in cities. Maybe they care about people of color. Maybe they care about immigrants, but they don’t seem to realize that we’re kind of suffering over here too. And they’re not thinking about us. 

I think you’re absolutely right that those two things are connected and it gets reinforced when you have statewide candidates who don’t bother to campaign in rural places. They don’t bother to come there, they don’t do outreach. 

But it’s really crucial to have two vibrant parties everywhere. My students will often say to me, “Why don’t we have a multi-party system in the United States?” And my response to them is, “Give me two.” I would like to see two competing parties everywhere. That would be a big improvement. So many rural places now have become dominated by one party, and it becomes a vicious cycle. 

County chairs find it’s harder and harder to recruit candidates who are willing to run in the down-ballot races at the local level because they’ll say, “You know, it’s not going to be worth it. I won’t win.” And then if they’re not fielding a full slate of candidates, they’ll have Democratic voters say to them, “Why should I even show up and vote? We don’t have a full slate.” And it gets harder and harder.

Having only one party really undermines all of the dynamics that help democracy work. People need to have a choice at the polls so that if they elect a person who doesn’t deliver for them, they can vote them out and vote for the other party. That’s just fundamental to how democracy is supposed to work. 

Trevor Brown: Why should Democrats trying to compete in rural areas? Well, if they don’t, they’ll ultimately be a minority party for the foreseeable future. 

In the House, for example, because of the growing rural-urban divide, Democrats are packed into these districts where you have candidates winning 90 percent of the votes. Whereas rural areas and rural voters are much more evenly distributed. So if Republicans are winning those districts, they’re more efficiently distributing their votes. Rural states are also overrepresented in the Senate and in the Electoral College as well. So, a good reason for Democrats to care about competing in rural areas is to win back the Senate and secure power.

Suzanne Mettler: I would say also that one party government in rural places is facilitating the movement of the Republican Party into an extremist party. If you only have one party, then all of the action is at the primary election level, not the general. What we’re seeing is that in each primary, a person gets a challenge by someone further to the right and further to the right, so then things move in a more and more extreme direction. 

Garrett Epps: What do we do now? We can’t go back and be FDR again. We can’t go back and re-electrify or build the Bonneville Dam. What is it that should be offered now? Democrats don’t have to carry the rural areas, but they have to lose by less. How can Democrats do that?

Suzanne Mettler: I think it is time for the Democratic Party for its own sake, but more importantly, for the sake of the country, for democracy, to really double down on organizing. And it can take a page from what happened not all that long ago when Howard Dean was the head of the Democratic National Committee. He had his “50-state strategy,” and he also doubled down on organizing in rural areas. He sent three or four organizers to every rural state, and some of the county chairs we interviewed still remembered when he would come through and get them all working together in all of these sparsely populated counties.

Starting in 2006, the Democrats won back Congress, both chambers, and then in 2008, Barack Obama wins the presidency and did very well in rural places. And a lot of rural places were once again electing Democrats as they had been up until the ’90s. Then a couple of years later, all of that organization was abandoned, and it fell apart rather quickly. 

It’s crucial to do that kind of organizing, and it can start with the effort of losing by less. I talked to a lot of county chairs in Georgia who really felt that they had gotten Senators Warnock and Ossoff over the finish line in these very close races. They said things like, “Well, if we do nothing, the Democratic candidate here will get about 34 percent of the vote. But if we work really hard, we can maybe get up to 37 percent.” And that’s what they did. County after county made that effort, and it all added up to victories. 

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