Wyoming’s primary is Tuesday, Aug. 20. A lot of the country is keeping an eye on the voting patterns of rural voters to see if they continue to trend more conservative.

Dee Davis is the president of the Center for Rural Strategies, an advocacy organization based in Kentucky. Davis said his organization recently conducted a survey that found rural voters aren’t necessarily angry at either party. Instead, they’re anti-corporate, mistrustful of industries like pharmaceuticals or oil and gas companies. He said even though the economy is doing well currently, with low unemployment and dropping inflation, rural voters are still scared.

“It's a worry in the water,” Davis said. “‘Am I going to be okay? Are my kids going to be okay? Is my community going to be okay?’ And there are a lot of pressures that are working against small towns right now. It's tactile. You feel it, you know it, you smell it in the air. You know that you've lost something.”

From surveys his organization has conducted, Davis said he’s seen that what rural voters want most is to feel indispensable to the American story. He said that need to feel needed is ultimately more important than the candidates and policies themselves.

“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,” Davis said. “Voting is much more about picking a side or wearing a uniform. Once you suit up for one side, you end up suiting up for a lot of the policies. So sometimes we find the tail wags the dog.”

Davis said he was surprised to see both presidential candidates pick running mates with rural roots, especially since the word “rural” wasn’t used once during the Biden-Trump debate earlier this summer.

Davis said it’s hard to say how rural voters will vote in elections since they aren’t paying much attention yet. He expects to learn more later this fall.

To hear the full interview with Dee Davis, tune in to Open Spaces this Friday at 3 p.m. or Sunday at 12 p.m.