excerpts from the articles:
“What happened in Virginia and New Jersey is a warning sign for what will happen in every statewide election, either U.S. Senate or any statewide office, because the only way you win statewide in a red or purple state is by getting at least 30 to 40 percent of the rural vote. And we used to be able to get that,” said Jane Kleeb, Nebraska Democratic Party chair. “Why don’t we anymore? We’ve completely lost touch with them.”
Or, more bluntly: “Wine moms won't save us. Need the beer moms,” said Irene Lin, who is managing Outagamie, Wisconsin, County Executive Tom Nelson’s Senate campaign.
There is evidence from 2020, though, that Democrats are not simply doomed to slide with rural voters in every election. American Bridge, a major Democratic outside group, spent $62 million on persuading and mobilizing predominantly rural voters in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, where Biden squeaked out a victory, in part, by improving his margins with rural voters.
In a presentation shared with POLITICO, American Bridge found in a post-election analysis that Biden received 750,000 more votes in rural areas in those states than Hillary Clinton did in 2016. The group targeted these voters for months, through TV, radio and digital ads featuring voters who had voted for Trump in 2016 but were no longer supporting him.
“It’s a game of math,” said Bradley Beychok, who led American Bridge’s effort in 2020. “If you lose by 75-25 instead of 85-15, it makes a big difference.”
Part of Democrats’ problems with rural voters boils down to a communication problem, politicians and strategists say, with voters unfamiliar with laws or proposals that the party shepherded through.
“This is a systemic failure of the Democratic Party, to systematically address the concerns of rural America and actually get out to rural America,” said former Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.), who founded the group One Country to urge Democrats to focus more on the rural electorate
Cynthia Wallace, a former North Carolina congressional candidate who recently launched the New Rural Project to engage voters in a handful of counties along the state’s border with South Carolina, said that recent focus groups and interviews her organization conducted with Black, Latino and Lumbee — a Native American tribe in the state — voters was revealing.
Those interviews, launched earlier this year shortly after the first child tax credit checks were delivered, showed that those voters weren’t crediting Democrats for policy goals.
“They didn't really feel impacted by it. But they also, most importantly, didn't have any idea who actually passed that legislation,” Wallace said. “We've got to improve our communication, about what things are happening and how elections lead to different things happening that can improve your life or not improve your life.”
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