Democratic Senate candidates cut the party’s rural deficit compared to the presidential vote in 2016. But Republicans still outperformed Democrats by 22 points in 28 states we studied. Republicans gained seats in the U.S. Senate in the last election, but it’s Democrats who gained in popularity among rural voters. The […]

When you opened your mailbox, watched television or listened to commercial radio in the lead-up to the election, you and other would-be voters were likely bombarded by political advertisements. Like in elections past, some of those materials were paid for by candidate committees and are easily identified as such. But […]

Democrats are losing rural votes not because of what they propose but because rural voters identify more with the Republican Party. “Democratic” ballot initiatives do well in rural, but Democratic candidates don’t. In politics these days, it’s not as much what is said as who says it. The reports on […]

Taylor Sappington is exactly the kind of candidate his party should want in Ohio. But he couldn’t get union support. Taylor Sappington heard the call like so many other Democrats in the year after Nov. 8, 2016. He had seen Donald Trump coming, homing in on his little town of […]

Democrats defeated an incumbent Republican in the rural New York’s 19th district. Republicans returned the favor in a rural district with an open seat in Minnesota. Maine’s rural congressional districts has yet to be decided. Democrats won a majority Tuesday in the U.S. House of Representatives that includes at least three […]