As the 2022 midterms are approaching, Democrats are losing support from rural voters in states like Pennsylvania who say the party’s brand has become “toxic.”
Democrats have left behind many parts of rural America and their messaging has been more focused on suburban and urban areas, the Associated Press reported Thursday. An accountant who lives in McKean County, Pennsylvania, said that “the hatred for Democrats is just unbelievable,” and he encouraged his daughter to get rid of her Biden bumper sticker, according to the AP. (RELATED: Court Finds Pennsylvania’s 2019 Law That Permitted No-Excuse Mail-In Voting Unconstitutional)
“The trend lines in rural America are very, very bad. … Now, the brand is so toxic that people who are Democrats, the ones left, aren’t fighting for the party,” former Democratic North Dakota Sen. Heidi Heitkamp told the AP.
Clifford Humphreys, Jr stands outside his damaged barn in Fulgham, Kentucky, on December 15, 2021, five days after tornadoes hit the area. – Even as donations of food, blankets and clothing made their way to isolated spots, some tornado-hit rural Kentuckians — many of whom embrace a lifestyle of self-sufficiency and independence — said they had no interest in being bombarded with help from Washington. “Personally the less government I see the better,” said Clifford Humphreys, a 65-year-old whose farm on a back road in Fulgham suffered moderate damage. (Photo by CHANDAN KHANNA / AFP) (Photo by CHANDAN KHANNA/AFP via Getty Images)
Rural voters have been shifting more to voting Republican over the years. In a poll done by NPR, former President Donald Trump won many votes from small, rural counties during the 2016 presidential election, which played a factor in his victory over then-candidate Hillary Clinton.
Western Pennsylvania had a red wave in November 2021 during statewide judicial races. Republicans outpolled Democrats and won elections in once Democrat-held strongholds, according to TRIBLive. The counties Republicans won included Washington, Westmoreland and Fayette.
Elected officials in other states such as Democratic Rep. Jim Cooper of Tennessee stated that Democrats are losing small-town America. Cooper is not running for re-election in 2022.
“It’s hard to sink lower than we are right now. You’re almost automatically a pariah in rural areas if you have a D after your name,” Cooper told the AP.
Republicans are also beating Democrats in voter registration in swing states like Florida. Democrats also lost votes in a lot of midwestern “factory towns” such as Michigan and Wisconsin, The New York Times reported.
To help get back support from rural voters, the DNC hired former North Dakota state legislator Kylie Oversen to work with rural organizers and reach voters there, the AP reported.