Rural Voters Can Swing Elections

For Kenner, the interaction captured something that often gets lost in conversations about rural voters: Rural America is not a monolith. The people the New Pennsylvania Project is trying to reach are more varied—and often more dispersed—than broad descriptions of the “rural vote” suggest.

Reaching these voters is part of a broader challenge facing civic organizations across rural America: how to engage people in communities separated by miles of road, who have limited transportation options, sketchy broadband access and shrinking local civic institutions. Also, how do you convince people who often feel ignored by electoral campaigns that voting is worth their time.

Why rural voters matter

Rural voters nationwide make up roughly a fifth of the American electorate, even as they live across communities that can be more difficult for campaigns and civic organizations to reach.

“There’s more rural voters than there are Black voters. There’s more rural voters than there are non-heterosexual voters. Than military veterans, and all of those are important constituencies,” says Nicholas F. Jacobs, co-author of The Rural Voter: The Politics of Place and the Disuniting of America.

A University of New Hampshire study published before the 2024 presidential election examined seven battleground states and modeled a three-percentage-point change in rural voting patterns. Although rural voters represented a minority of voters in each of the states studied, the researchers found that a shift of that size would have changed the outcome in three battleground states. The 2024 election demonstrated the relevance of that analysis. Harris lost Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin—the three states traditionally known as Democrats’ “Blue Wall”—by 1.7, 1.6 and .9 percentage points respectively.  

The results illustrated the importance of competing for a voting bloc that can represent a substantial share of the electorate in closely contested states. In the 2022 midterms, rural voters accounted for 23 percent of voters in U.S. House races nationwide. In states with highly contested Senate and gubernatorial races, they represented 26 percent of voters.

“If you look at rural voters and how central they are to determining the outcomes in states like Wisconsin or Michigan or in Iowa, you don’t think of majorities necessarily there, but they’re closer to 30, 40 percent of the electorate,” says Jacobs. “So it’s hard to win that state if you don’t take account of rural voters.”

Jacobs argues that the same electoral importance will carry into the 2026 midterms, particularly in states where rural residents represent a substantial portion of the electorate.

Reaching rural voters year ’round

Understanding rural voters is one challenge. Reaching them is another. In cities and suburbs, organizers encounter large numbers of voters within relatively small geographic areas. Rural outreach often requires traveling long distances between communities, stretching the time and money available to organizations.

When traveling to western Pennsylvania, Kenner says she tries to combine stops in several counties into a single trip. When in-person outreach is impractical, the organization uses Zoom and social media to connect with rural voters. One answer is to recruit leaders who live in those rural communities.

“There needs to be a year-round effort,” says Sarah Burnham, researcher at Tufts University’s Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement. “More marginalized communities like rural communities or communities of color can feel tokenized if they’re only being outreached to in an election season.”

For voters, the distinction can be noticeable. Kenner says people approached by political parties or candidates may wonder why those organizations were absent when their communities needed attention at other times in the year.

“November 10, a week after the election, we’re out trying to get folks to register to vote,” says Kenner. “When political parties or candidates are knocking on their door, it’s only right around campaign season, and they’re like, ‘Well, where have you been the rest of this year when I needed a pothole filled or I needed assistance with this or that?’”

Local voice, local trust

Sarah Jaynes, Executive Director of Rural Democracy Initiative, says that having local messengers is crucial to reaching rural voters.

“People trust the people they know, and they really don’t trust people who are coming in from outside the community and don’t understand the particular dynamics,” says Jaynes.  “It’s really important to have those trusted folks who are known, and people they know are working on their behalf and understand their interests.”

Research on election communication has found evidence that local connections can affect how voters receive information. In one 2024 study, researchers found that neutral election messages invoking local connections resonated most strongly when attempting to build trust. Participants also responded more positively when election information came from a local election official, suggesting that both local connections and the identity of the messenger can shape trust.

Rural Democracy Initiative’s 2024 Rural Voter Research found that along with family and friends, veterans, local law enforcement, farmers and small business owners are among the most trusted community messengers. In comparison, a community’s governor, mayor or member of Congress appear at the bottom of those trusted by rural residents.

“Ideally, voters are hearing from members of their community about the importance of the election,” says Amy Halstead, Co-Director of Maine People’s Alliance. The organization’s volunteer neighborhood captains in rural communities repeatedly connect with voters between early fall and Election Day.

Halstead says using a multitude of strategies to reach community members produces the strongest voter turnout.

Digital outreach and the limits of technology

Digital tools can help organizations overcome some of the distances separating rural voters, but access is not universal. CIRCLE research found that among young people living in what it calls “civic deserts,” 34 percent lacked reliable internet access and 31 percent lacked reliable mobile coverage.

The challenge extends beyond broadband. Reaching voters through traditional media can also be difficult when rural communities are scattered across numerous markets.

“Running a real 67-county campaign in Pennsylvania is a challenge because there are a lot of counties that are very rural,” says Daniel Mallinson, associate professor of public policy and administration at Penn State Harrisburg. “Being able to access voters there—there’s not a single big media market. There might not even be radio stations, depending on where you’re at.”

The problem can be compounded by the decline of local news. During a listening tour across 16 Maine communities, the nonprofit The Maine Monitor heard from residents who said disappearing hyperlocal coverage made it harder to understand local government and elections.

“People told us that they left the polling stations without voting on local issues just because they didn’t know what the issues were about,” says Micaela Schweitzer-Bluhm, executive director of The Maine Monitor.

Barriers to the ballot

A 2026 study found that the disappearance of local newspapers was associated with a statistically significant decline in voter turnout and evidence of increased political polarization.

In rural areas, registering to vote and casting a ballot come with their own difficulties.

“When there’s attacks against mail-in voting and you live in rural PA, you might need to drive 30 miles, 50 miles to a drop-box location, if you even have one in your county, the cost associated with that puts a burden on people,” says Kenner. “If I need to drive 60 miles round-trip to vote, that costs me 15 bucks in gas. It’s really a poll tax.”

Research published in 2026 using voting data from Pennsylvania and Georgia found that a one-mile increase in distance to a polling place reduced the likelihood of voting in person by between one and three percentage points. When mail voting was available, voters increasingly used it as the distance to their polling place grew.

Mail-in ballots are particularly useful to rural populations, says Mallinson, the Penn State Harrisburg associate professor, but they come with their own information burden.

“We have mail voting but you need to know those rules,” says Mallinson. “There are rules about dating, about signatures and secrecy envelopes, and God, there’s a lot of information needed to be able to vote by mail.”

A 2014 review found that early voting can give voters greater flexibility around work, childcare and other responsibilities. The research also suggests that increases in turnout are greatest when early voting is combined with same-day voter registration, also helping narrow the race and class voter turnout gap.

The politically homeless

The Republican advantage in rural America did not emerge overnight. Jacobs describes the shift as an “overdetermined phenomenon,” driven by overlapping economic, political and cultural changes rather than a single election or candidate.

He says another significant development has been weakening attachment to both major parties.

“More important than the shift from one party to another is the general dealignment of our two parties,” says Jacobs. “More and more people are finding themselves to be politically homeless and do not trust either party when it comes to whether or not they have their best interests at stake.”

A recent KFF/AP Survey found that while rural voters continue to lean Republican, concerns about the cost of living and dissatisfaction with President Trump’s handling of the economy have weakened his support among some rural voters. About six in 10 rural voters disapproved of Trump’s handling of the economy, including 27 percent of rural Republican voters.

Jacobs argues that for rural voters, economic hardship experienced by neighbors can matter more than hardships they experience themselves. That sense of shared fate means the condition of local hospitals, schools, businesses and other community institutions can become part of how residents understand their own well-being.

“Most people who read about politics are familiar with the question you need to ask in every election poll: Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” says Jacobs. “We find that people’s answers to that question do a really good job at predicting how they’re going to vote, except that in rural communities, it matters less than the answer to the question: Is your community better off than it was before?”

If Democrats hope to close the political divide in rural areas, Jacobs says that they must demonstrate that they are invested in those communities–not simply compete for their votes when an election approaches.

That argument echoes a draft Democratic National Committee review of the party’s 2024 election performance, which concluded that Democrats had neglected rural voters and needed to rebuild their trust through sustained engagement. The report urged the party to “show up, listen, and then do it again.”

The political future of rural America, then, may depend on more than whether Democrats can persuade voters who have increasingly supported Republicans. It may depend on whether either party–and the civic institutions surrounding them–can convince rural residents that the places they call home matter beyond Election Day.

For voters who judge their own well-being partly by the well-being of the community around them, being heard may begin with something even simpler: someone showing up to listen.

Dylan SokolovichMore by this author →

Dylan Sokolovich is a writer from Reading, Pennsylvania, and a recent graduate from Albright College.