According to the rhetoric of Generation Z, America has always been politically bisected into two distinct regions and two distinct ideologies: rural conservatism and urban liberalism. The binary story of such political polarity is falsely taken as a fixed, given feature of our country. This narrative changes when considering that the GOP’s dominance in rural America is not even 35 years old.
Before the mid-1990s, the rural and urban electorates would often shift their votes in tandem, with only a slight preference for Republican candidates among rural voters. The rural vote was split between Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford in 1976. And in 1992, Bill Clinton nearly matched the Republican rural vote share.
Democrats need to win back seats in America’s disproportionately Republican rural districts. They must dismantle the party’s demographic assumptions about small-town constituents, campaign on platforms disaffiliated from the Democratic national brand and mobilize to rural districts, even those that seem gridlocked.
Understanding the composition and priorities of rural voters — without deception from exaggeration or presumptuous stereotypes — is a foundational step towards reconciling the Democratic rural vote. Since the Trump Administration has capitalized on white supremacy in rural America, political commentators often falsely conflate “rural” with inherently white. 21% of rural residents are people of color, and yet, their political presence is often dismissed by widespread myths of a purely white countryside. Because rural America is whitewashed in the media, racial equity efforts often cease at urban-centered policies. Rural people of color are often left out of discussions about racial inequities in America, making them particularly predisposed to the consequences of systemic oppression.
A majority of white Americans voted for Donald Trump in 2020, regardless of income or geography. Meanwhile, Native American voters in the rural Midwest effectively helped swing states turn blue. Misinformed ideas about demographic absolutes inhibit urban-rural and interracial coalitions, only propelling the paralyzing us-versus-them narratives forward.
These assumptions also stop Democratic candidates from reaching a broad enough audience to secure the electoral victories they need. Running as a Democrat in the rural South and Midwest is a battle against the very word Democrat and its infamy — political priorities aside.
Take Sherrod Brown, an economic populist who lost his Ohio Senate seat in 2024. The narrow margin that ultimately resulted in his loss was due to the Democratic penalty. Brown campaigned to protect rural Ohio residents from rapid post-industrial job loss as manufacturing became increasingly outsourced. His stances on trade, opposition to corporate rule, retirement benefits, health care and cost of living were entirely aligned with the interests of a working-class, rural populace. And yet, he could not evade the trope of the condescending urban elite, all while being an economic populist.
Democracy descends further into its decay because of the lack of communication in our two-party system. But there is also a grave political disadvantage for a party that cannot win seats in districts that are given proportionately more seats than they are owed.
In America’s bicameral legislature, less populated districts are overrepresented by their two Senate seats. When the upper-chamber has an equal number of legislators for Wyoming, a state with 580,000 residents — and California, a state with 39.5 million residents, the rural skew gives Senate confirmation hearings and impeachment trials a slanted GOP weight.
As for the lower chamber, the metropolitan districts often give the House seat to a Democrat by a large margin. However, Republicans win by a narrow margin in the suburbs, small towns and rural areas. Even if the vote share of a state is majority Democrat, the urban clustering does not evenly distribute its voice across every district. This winner-takes-all system piles up Democratic votes in a handful of districts, diluting their majority.
The Republican domination of rural America is not irreconcilable. Democrats need to mobilize small towns year-round, not just during the occasional rallies of their election season. Candidates also need to differentiate themselves, akin to Sherrod Brown. Because Brown himself cannot dismantle the media bias, a collective effort from the Democratic Party in rural districts is needed. Pivoting rural distrust in big government to an aversion towards corporate greed is not an entirely unreasonable through line.
In any advanced industrial nation, members of the slow-growth sector will likely resent the steeply funded tech industry that largely drives the urban economy. Rural residents need to trust that their tax dollars are not solely funneled into big city infrastructure and welfare, but instead directly fuel and maintain the well-being of their own livelihoods.
As Amazon and e-commerce usurp considerable chunks of the retail industry, rural voters fear that the government will disproportionately allocate their taxes to metropolitan initiatives. Democratic leaders need to speak a language of respect to rural constituents and translate their policies into fulfilling place-based needs.
Isabella Ehring is the 2025-2026 Opinion Editor. She can be reached at iehring@uci.edu.
Edited by Casey Mendoza and Joshua Gonzales.