We're just a few days out from Wyoming's primary election on Aug. 20, and candidates at the local, state and federal levels are courting the rural vote. But rural folks don't vote as a bloc, and even our sense of who is rural often doesn't match how some voters see themselves.
Dee Davis studies rural voters as president of the Center for Rural Strategies, an advocacy group based in Kentucky. He recently talked about this election cycle with Wyoming Public Radio's Melodie Edwards, starting with a warning against inaccurate stereotypes.
Editor’s Note: This interview has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.
Dee Davis: I think in some ways, you make these broad assumptions about voting patterns in blue states, red states. I live in Kentucky, which is a reliably red state. From my porch, I can see Virginia, which is now considered a reliably blue state, but [Former President Donald] Trump got more votes in Virginia than from Kentucky [in 2016]. Virginia has a Republican governor. Kentucky has a Democrat governor. California is the bluest state, but it had more Trump voters than Texas, which is considered the heart of MAGA [Make America Great Again] country. So I think in some ways, we look for stereotypes. We need to label things so that we can go on to our calculations.
Melodie Edwards: I wonder if you can talk a little bit about why we're seeing both parties choosing vice presidential candidates that are from rural demographics? It seems like there's an effort, finally, to take this rural voting bloc a little bit more seriously.
DD: Right, I didn't see it coming. I think that in a country that is consumed with identity, there were certain forces converging and one of them was people's romanticization of America and of democracy. What we hardly ever talked about is that in this country that's 60 percent suburban, there are a lot of people who live in those suburbs and even in cities who started out in the country or who identify [as rural]. ‘I used to spend my summers on my granddad's farm.’ ‘I grew up in a small town.’
So I think that there is a moment where there is a real competition for this kind of spirit or imagery or iconography where people value this notion of rural American identification. I think certainly with [Vice President Kamala] Harris, she is such an urban candidate that the counterbalance was with [Governor Tim] Walz. I think in some ways (J.D.) Vance, who had written “Hillbilly Elegy”, even though he grew up in the Cincinnati suburbs, he had the credentials to be this rural character.
ME: We're also seeing a growing distrust of democratic institutions in general. I just wonder if you can talk a little bit about the distrust in rural communities that seems to be continuing to grow.
DD: About a year ago, we did polling in rural battleground states. Some of the results were surprising to me. Certainly, you do see economic issues like inflation being important. But what we saw that I did not expect was the kind of anti-corporate populism, where people were just upset with insulin prices and oil companies. It was not like blaming the party. They were blaming the businesses. I did not anticipate that.
I also felt like, from our sample, it was not that rural people were upset with the rest of the country; it was more that they really wanted to get back to where they were feeding and fueling the country. They wanted to get back to where they were the critical components of the American story or certainly included. Feeling like they were being dismissed or disregarded was causing trouble.
ME: This is a good way of talking about this misperception that our economy in the United States is not doing well. Even though, when you look at the numbers, unemployment is down, inflation is improving, a lot of those typical indicators say that our economy is fine and that everybody should be pretty content. Why is it that rural voters still seem to be so discontent with the state of our economy?
DD: I think unemployment is down pretty much everywhere, that there are jobs, and I see now much more opportunity for employment, and not the same pressures to have to leave to make a living.
But there's always concern about [the economy]. It's a worry in the water: you know, ‘Am I going to be okay? Are my kids going to be okay? Is my community going to be okay?’ There are a lot of pressures working against small towns right now. I don't think it's permanent but I do think it's tactile. You feel it, you smell that in the air. You know that you've lost something.
ME: In Wyoming, we're really seeing the Freedom Caucus moving in and replacing a lot of our long time lawmakers who are more moderate Republicans. Then, of course, Wyoming went to Trump in higher rates than any other state. So there's a real attraction to those kinds of candidates. I wonder if you can talk a little bit about the attraction. What is it that's going on there?
DD: In polling, we say, ‘Okay, are you for this guy, are you for that guy? Okay, now, what are the 10 most important issues?’ And then we juxtapose these questions and we assume, ‘Okay, because they think that the most important issue is jobs or second amendment or school uniforms,’ whatever it is, then we tend to think, ‘Oh, the reason that voter picked that candidate was because of school uniforms.’
But the reality is, people pick a candidate and the policy is a luxury. If Trump changed his mind about TikTok or abortion, it's not like there's going to be a huge number of voters who switch, which we may assume it is. But voting is much more about picking a side or wearing a uniform. Once you suit up for one side, you kind of end up suiting up for a lot of the policies. So sometimes we find the tail wags the dog.
ME: I wonder if you have a vision for what it is that could start to bring the country together and help bridge that divide?
DD: It's easy just to think that the first time we got upset was yesterday, right? But look at the Vietnam War protests. There's been some intense divisions in the country before. I don't think we're at a place we can't come back from. The question is, do we want to come back? With everybody on their own news feed and everybody segregated in their own similar community, have we gotten to a place where we're not interacting and we're not able to come help each other, help neighbors?
In our focus groups, there was a lot of discussion about loss: loss of community, loss of agency, loss of being part of the American story. Sometimes, when people from outside look at rural communities, they say, ‘Oh, they're racist, they're xenophobic, they just want to turn the clock back.’ But rural communities are diverse too.
I remember interviewing Senator Tom Daschle (D-SD) once. He was crossing South Dakota as he did every year. We talked to him about small towns. He said, ‘The thing about small towns, everybody's needed. You're needed for the football team. You're needed for the band. You're needed for the school board, the library board.’
The way you heal the divide is to think, urban and rural aren't that different. The issues they face aren't really that different. If we can think that we're all indispensable in a way, then it gives – I know it sounds kind of romantic – but in a way, it's a sense that we're all pulling on the same rope.
