Democrats say they aim to win back rural voters for 2026 : NPR

Democrats are announcing new investments aimed at winning over voters in rural areas, where the party suffered deep losses in recent elections, as they try to win a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives next year.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee says this is the first time it has a program specifically designed to reach rural voters.

Susan DelBene, who chairs the DCCC and represents Washington's 1st Congressional District, said Democrats see an opportunity to attract rural voters in President Trump's economic agenda, especially on tariffs. becomes less popular.

She said rural voters see the “damage” caused by GOP policies that have led to “rising costs, cutting health care” and Democrats can offer an alternative.

“I think Republicans are turning away,” DelBene told NPR. “They are actively harming rural communities with their policies. Democrats are fighting to improve the lives of rural Americans and farmers.”

Trump has defended his economic agenda and plans to deliver that message to the country soon, an administration official said. recently told NPR.

Democrats' spending in rural communities is part of an “eight-figure investment,” according to a DCCC press release first shared with NPR. DelBene said the DCCC has a full-time staff member who will focus on “strategic engagement with rural areas across the country” in the interim. She said the party had begun working with rural community groups and leaders in key competitive areas, including recently redrawn Areas of South Texas.

“When we look at swing districts across the country, districts that will determine the majority in the House of Representatives, we know that rural voters play a key role in those districts,” DelBene said.

Anthony Flaccavento, co-founder and executive director of the Rural Urban Bridge Initiative, said economic disillusionment among most voters could present an opportunity for Democrats, and that rural voters tend to support economically populist policies.

“We are very clear that a progressive, populist economic position is needed,” he said. “This is what is needed essentially. For example, we need antitrust, antitrust, pro-union measures and the infrastructure investments that go along with that.”

But the question remains whether the economic message will help Democrats win back part of a voting bloc that has been leaving the party in droves.

Winning back rural voters could be 'bloody difficult'

According to Pew Research CenterIn last year's presidential election, Trump won 69% of voters who described their localities as rural, compared to 29% for Kamala Harris.

Flaccavento said winning back even some of those rural voters would likely be “hell hard” for Democrats. But, he said, this is a problem that the party must confront directly.

“We focus on rural areas, but because there is so much overlap in why people left the Democrats and why they became so disillusioned, there is a lot of similarity between working class people in small towns and rural people,” Flaccavento said. “When you combine those two — rural voters and working-class blue-collar voters — you get the largest voting bloc in the country.”

Flaccavento, a small farmer in southwest Virginia who describes himself as a liberal Democrat, has twice run for Virginia's 9th Congressional District. He said he has high hopes for his 2018 victory.

“We held over 100 in-person meetings with approximately 7,000 people in attendance. We had great social media. We raised a million dollars. We did everything right,” he said. “And I was still destroyed at the ballot box by a 2-to-1 margin.”

Flaccavento said negative perceptions of Democrats in rural areas have long been difficult to overcome because the party has ignored concerns that workers and rural residents had.

“First of all, economic problems,” he said. “They were downplayed.”

Nicholas Jacobs, a political scientist at Colby College in Maine, said Democrats have not simply ignored the concerns of rural voters, he said the party is “actively promoting[ed] them away.”

Jacobs said the party began cutting back on campaign investments in rural America as Democrats abandoned their 50-state strategy. Instead, he said, the party was focused on mobilizing its core voters in major cities and convincing independent voters in the suburbs.

“Ultimately, you get full support for an approach, articulated no better than Chuck Schumer himself, that 'for every rural working-class person we lose, we gain two more in the suburbs,'” he said. to paraphrase the Senate Democratic leader. “And as 2016 showed, it was a stupid approach, but it doesn’t seem to have changed anything over the next eight years.”

Flaccavento agreed that it was a “losing strategy” for the party.

But he said it will take more than targeted investments in a few swing districts to truly shore up some of the support that has been lost in rural America.

“I hope that this is a serious commitment, not a symbolic commitment, and that this commitment goes beyond a few targeted races,” he said. “We must begin long-term investment and long-term work in every rural constituency. It may be five, ten or even more years before some of them become competitive, but we have to start this work now.”

Jacobs said he hopes Democrats are starting to “wake up” to the fact that rural areas cannot be ignored.

“If you're going to build a national party and compete nationally, you need to represent the whole nation and all its wonderful and complex mess,” he said. “And that includes how rural Americans fit into your idea of ​​the nation.”