Rural Voters Play Decisive Role in Midterm Elections

Rural voters played a decisive role in the midterm results, as the war on Iran, tariffs, deportation policy, the economy, political corruption and extreme wealth inequality soured voters on the Republican agenda and spurred them to the polls. Data from the Washington Post found rural counties swung 15.3 points in favor of Democrats compared to 2024. Meanwhile, majority-Hispanic counties swung 28.5 points in Democrats’ favor and younger counties (those where the majority of voting-age citizens is between 18-44) swung 21.3 points toward Democrats.

Historic precedents were broken across the country.

Kansas: Methodist pastor Adam Hamilton became the first Democrat elected to the Senate from Kansas since 1932, ending a 94-year drought in a state Trump won by 16 points in 2024.

Texas: Former seminarian James Talarico, a member of the Texas House, became the first Democrat to win a Texas Senate seat since 1988. In the governor’s race, Gina Hinojosa ousted two-term incumbent Greg Abbott to become Texas’ first Latina governor and the first Democrat to win the office since Ann Richards in 1990.

Ohio: Rep. Marcy Kaptur, who holds the record as the longest serving woman in the House of Representatives, survived a GOP gerrymander and was reelected to her 23rd term. Kaptur represents Ohio’s 9th Congressional District, and was first elected in 1983 at the age of 36.

Michigan: Public health doctor Abdul El-Sayed overcame a spending spree by pro-Israel dark money to become the first Muslim American elected to the U.S. Senate. In his victory speech, El-Sayed said, “To AIPAC [American Israel Public Affairs Committee], who spent $42 million against us, thank you for giving me the opportunity to beat you twice.”

Georgia: Keisha Lance Bottoms became the first Black woman elected to govern a state in U.S. history.

Maine: Fifth-generation logger Troy Jackson pulled off an upset victory over Republican Sen. Susan Collins, who has served as U.S. Senator for Maine since 1997. Just months earlier, Jackson was running in Maine’s gubernatorial election—the only candidate to sign the People’s Pledge to not accept dark money. In July, Jackson stepped into the Senate race after Graham Platner dropped out. “I will be thinking about generations of Mainers who worked in our woods, built our ships, kept our mills running, the people who built this state and deserve a government that works for them,” Jackson said in his victory speech. “That is what I am going to fight for every damn day.”

Rural voters made their voices heard elsewhere in surprising ways.

North Carolina: Former Army paratrooper Richard Ojeda pulled off a stunning victory in the state’s 9th Congressional District—a race Cook Political Report had characterized as “solid Republican.” Ojeda, a former Trump voter who turned to support of Bernie Sanders in 2020, beat out Rep. Richard Hudson, the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee and the fifth-highest ranking Republican in the U.S. House. Ojeda’s rural district has been represented by a Republican since 1963. Earlier this year, Ojeda emphasized his support for the Veterans Administration and rural health care, saying in an interview with Barn Raiser, “When these rural hospitals lose their funding that comes from Medicaid, they’re going to shut down. And when the hospital shuts down, it literally destroys a community that relies on that hospital.”

Texas: Fifth-generation Texas rancher and Texas Farmers Union Secretary Clayton Tucker was elected the first Democratic agriculture commissioner in nearly 40 years. The agency’s last Democratic commissioner was Jim Hightower. Hightower was crucial in generating support for Tucker, a former State Director of Our Revolution who was steeped in Texas’ rich populist history. Tucker’s outspoken opposition to corporate agriculture monopolies and the state’s accelerated data center growth helped him build a large coalition across the state. After being elected, Tucker said on social media: “[W]hen Texans stand together to protect our land, our water, and our communities from the Greedy Few, organized people can beat organized money.”

Rural counties showed some of the largest swings in Democrats’ favor, especially Latino majority counties along the South Texas border, such as Starr, Webb and Dual counties. In 2024, Trump won Starr County, where about 97% of residents are Hispanic or Latino, with 58% of the vote; on Tuesday, 77% of the county voted for Talarico. Seward County, a Latino majority county in Kansas, saw a swing of more than 45 points in Democrats’ favor. All told, the largest state swings in the country occurred in Texas, North Carolina, Mississippi and Rhode Island.

Early demographic results point to notable trends. According to data from the New York Times, while nearly every group swung in favor of Democrats, some of the biggest shifts came among Hispanic voters and voters ages 18-44. Both groups had had swung heavily in favor of Republicans in 2024, and their return to the Democratic fold points to a segment of the electorate deeply uneasy with the presiding political power and ripe for generational change.

The trend holds even when factoring for race. Both white and nonwhite voters ages 18-29 respectively swung 30 and 32 points in favor of Democrats, with Republicans losing their 2024 advantage among white voters ages 18-29. Education, however, remains a clear divide. Democrats made a 14-point inroad among white Americans with no college degree, but Republicans still hold a 19-point advantage among the group. However, Democrats hold a 55-point advantage among nonwhite Americans without a college degree, who swung 23 points to the left.

Despite spending the last few weeks telling the public to vote as if he was “on the ballot” this election, President Trump quickly sought to deflect blame for Republicans’ losses. “I wasn’t on the Ballot and if I was, we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE!” he posted on his own social media platform Tuesday night.

What’s ahead for Democrats?

Even with Democrats’ sweeping victories, an arguably bigger test awaits. How the party uses its control of Congress to govern in the final two years of Trump’s presidency will dictate whether victories in 2026 could become liabilities in 2028.

The ways Democrats interpret Tuesday’s results will shape the contours of their party’s public image in 2028. Does voter turnout simply show a realignment of the electorate? Or, does it represent voter reaction to a deeply unpopular president who has enriched himself along with the corporate PACs and billionaire donors who backed him? Will the newly empowered Democrats in Congress break with their past and combat the corporate monopolies that have consolidated control of our food system? Will Democrats pay more than lip service to a health care crisis in which many rural people can’t afford health insurance, while too many rural hospitals have closed or are on the verge of closing? Will they root out the dark money that fuels the corporate-backed legislative agenda that has left millions suffering from poverty and food insecurity?

Democrats and progressives still have a decided disadvantage in rural areas, the result of years of political and economic neglect. According to the AP Voter Poll of the 2026 electorate, rural and small town voters made up 35% of the overall vote. 

The poll found overall 57% of rural and small town voters voted in favor of Republicans, while 41% voted in favor of Democrats. Among those same voters, 45% said Trump was not a factor in their vote, while 33% said their vote expressed opposition to Trump and 22% said their vote expressed support for Trump. (For a comparison, Pew Research reported in 2016 that Trump won the support of 59% rural voters in 2016 and 69% of rural voters in 2024.)

In other words, one should not separate Democrats’ newfound vitality, as demonstrated by the resurgence of progressive, democratic socialist-oriented candidates, from the party’s need to build organized coalitions in rural and Republican-dominated areas.

In a recent post, Jared Abbott, a researcher at the Center for Working-Class Politics, wrote:

[A]bandoning rural America means that [progressives] undermine our longer-term strategic prospects by ceding large swaths of the country to far-right domination.

Bhaskar Sunkara, president of the Nation and founding editor of Jacobin, put it this way in the Guardian:

[T]he fact that even a victory like this leaves Republicans with so much support tells us about the extreme polarization of the country and the limits on how much electoral punishment a disastrous administration can expect.

To break through, Democrats need to do better in rural and semi-rural areas, and they need to reverse the trend of class dealignment in a more systematic way by making their party the party of working-class concerns and interests. That means fighting for higher wages, stronger unions, affordable housing and healthcare, and giving working people a reason to believe that Democrats will make their lives better.

Other questions facing Democrats: What leaders will it choose? Will those leaders promote legislative priorities that align with the message voters sent on Tuesday? Or, will progressive momentum hit the sinkhole of a D.C. consultant class and corporate-backed establishment Democrats who helped orchestrate the party’s abandonment of rural America and have proven ineffective at combating the right-wing’s authoritarian playbook?

The leadership of both the House and Senate agriculture committees has yet to be chosen. Democrats have an opportunity set a new course for farm and rural policy.

“The real implications are long term,” says Aaron Lehman, president of the Iowa Farmers Union. Founded in 1915, the group threw its support to Democrats Josh Turek for the Senate and Rob Sand for governor. Lehman tells Barn Raiser:

Are we going to see a return to the status quo that has been so badly disrupted by [the Trump administration], or are we going to see a real reset in policy that reflects what’s going on in our rural communities and farms. If we only just want to return to the status quo, I think we’re going to be disappointed. …We’ve always known that rural communities have a huge proportion of swing voters, and organizing in rural communities resonates.

One of those candidates determined to buck the status quo was Chris Jones, a retired water scientist running for agriculture commissioner.

“Just the fact that he’s running has forced every other candidate to talk about water quality in Iowa, when they would have never touched it because it is the third rail of politics in Iowa,” Suzan Erem, Iowa farmer and Barn Raiser elections editor, told Ryan Grim in an interview with Drop Site.

Jones ultimately lost to the Republican incumbent Mike Naig—a former Monsanto lobbyist—by 5 points. But his campaign arguably changed the terms of debate in Iowa, with candidates on both aisles across House, Senate and the governor’s race being forced to address Iowa’s nation-leading cancer rates and poor water quality due to industrial ag runoff. “The movement that powered our campaign will be there to keep holding corporate agricultural polluters accountable,” Jones said in a statement after the election.

Matt Hildreth, the executive director of Rural Organizing, who served as rural outreach director for the Harris-Walz campaign in 2024, also highlighted the relentless, courageous work of rural organizers. He tells Barn Raiser:

The 2026 midterms were Democrats’ biggest rural comeback since 2010. After more than a decade in which rural America moved steadily away from the party, Tuesday’s results reversed the slide: In 2027, more rural Americans will have a Democratic governor, a Democratic House member and at least one Democratic senator than at any point in more than a decade.

The Rural Democracy Initiative, established eight years ago, now supports the work of 168 rural-focused organizations (including Barn Raiser) in 23 states. Sarah Jaynes, the group’s executive director, tells Barn Raiser:

Rural people are economic populists who want to see higher paychecks, restrictions on corporate power, and be able to afford the essentials. They are angry about corruption in Washington and oppose the ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] overreach that is causing chaos in our communities. Through years of organizing, rural groups have built the relationships to channel this frustration into action. Whether it’s overcoming cynicism or navigating new red tape for a mail-in ballot, they helped people overcome barriers to cast their ballot. Their votes yesterday shook up the political establishment. Now we’re excited to get to work with our new elected leaders to deliver for rural working people.

An issue that resonated with farmers across the country is the unchecked power of the food-system monopolies.

Dan Osborn’s independent bid for Senate was another sign of voters rejecting the status quo. While he gained an early lead, Osborn ultimately lost by 6 points to Republican incumbent Pete Ricketts. Yet, Osborn, a military veteran and union member who led a 2021 Kellogg’s strike in Omaha, helped turn a solid Republican seat into a competitive race by centering the enforcement of antitrust law and breaking up corporate monopolies.

“Dan Osborn made Nebraska a real race by talking about the issues farmers and working families feel every day,” said Farm Action co-founder Maxwell in a statement. “That message isn’t going away. We hope Senator Ricketts hears what Nebraska’s rural voters were saying, and puts them ahead of the corporations that control their markets.” Maxwell went on to say: “From Iowa to Florida, voters rewarded candidates who stood up the meatpackers, the pesticide giants and the corporate lobbyists writing farm policy in Washington.”

Osborn will have another opportunity to run for a Nebraska’s U.S. Senate seat in 2030. It remains to be seen where he will lead what he called in his concession speech, “a historic grassroots movement of independents, Republicans, Democrats and Nebraskans of all backgrounds.”

In Tennessee’s gerrymandered 9th District, Justin Pearson, who lost by 1 point, also appeared to leave the door open for another run. Conceding the election to MAGA-affiliated Brent Taylor, Pearson told his supporters:

Your work has not been in vain. This is not the end of our movement, but only the beginning. Together, we have ensured that hundreds of thousands of everyday Tennesseans know that they have the power to take on the wealthiest people in the world and build the better future we all know we deserve.

I will continue to fight for the people of Tennessee and my constituents as a proud State Representative for District 86 and look forward to returning to all 15 counties [in the 9th District] to share my gratitude and continue building our Movement for Justice Rooted in Love.

God does everything well, and because of our historic campaign, Tennessee politics will never be the same.

How dark money lost big

The 2026 midterms were the most expensive ever, with a record $11.9 billion in election spending, surpassing the $8.9 billion spent in 2022.

Democratic candidates outspent Republicans by $800 million according to Open Secrets, which predicted Democratic candidates will have spent more than $2.2 billion by the end of the cycle compared to $1.4 billion for Republican candidates. When it comes to “dark money” Republicans had the advantage, with $2 billion as opposed top $1.7 billion for Democrats. Underlying that figure, however, was a deep division in the Democratic Party itself about where that money came from and what it bought.

Nowhere was this more evident than with voter’s rejection of spending by pro-Israel groups. El-Sayed’s Senate win in Michigan and Randy Villegas’s win in California’s 22nd Congressional District proved notable examples. Villegas, a political science professor, beat out an opponent with significant pro-Israel funding, as El-Sayed was, and who was also backed by Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Villegas’s Republican opponent, David Valadao, ended with $1.7 million in cash on hand, receiving more than twice as much money from PACs than the average House candidate, according to Open Secrets. Villegas, on the other hand, vowed not to take corporate campaign donations.

“With today’s election results, the Central Valley proved what’s possible when working people come together and refuse to let billionaires, Washington, and special interests decide our future,” Villegas said in a statement on Tuesday night. “The people of the Valley made their voices heard loud and clear: the Central Valley is not for sale.”

All told, voters offered a stunning defeat to dark money.

According to Open Secrets’ analysis of federal campaign finance disclosures, nearly 10% of all contributions came from 10 ultra-wealthy donors. Elon Musk led the pack, contributing more than $445 million to Republican candidates, political action committees and outside spending groups. (Musk’s SpaceXAI is building some of the largest data center projects in the country.)

Among Musk’s largest donations was $168 million for the Senate Leadership Fund, which transferred a majority of its funds to back PAC favoring Republican Ken Paxton, the Texas Attorney General who lost to Talarico.

In the lead-up to the election, Talarico referenced Musk as a modern-day Goliath: “We are going up against our own Goliaths—those billionaire megadonors, those corporate PACs, the entire Washington D.C. establishment.”

On Tuesday, Talarico followed up: “Tonight we defeated Goliath.”

Justin PerkinsMore by this author →

Justin Perkins is Barn Raiser Deputy Editor & Publisher and Board Clerk of Barn Raising Media Inc. He received his Master of Divinity degree from the University of Chicago Divinity School. The son of a hog farmer, he grew up in Papillion, Neb., and got his start as a writer with his hometown newspaper the Papillion Times, The Daily Nebraskan, Rural America In These Times and In These Times. He has previous editorial experience at Prairie Schooner and Image.