More post-election commentary on the rural vote

The rural vote has garnered a surprising amount of attention since the November 9 election, but I'll highlight just a few recent essays and tweets in this post.  First, there is Robert Kuttner in The American Prospect writing under the headline, "The Rural Turnaround," which begins with some data:   

For decades, Democrats have been losing rural America by ever-worsening margins. If they could perform even 5 percent better in rural counties, the political landscape would be transformed. In the 2022 midterm, Democrats did increase their share of the rural vote in several states, and it’s worth exploring where and why.

After going over the "appalling" recent history, Kuttner gets to what I believe is the most interesting part of the piece: 

My doctoral student at Brandeis, Rachel Steele, has just completed a dissertation on Democrats and rural voters, which will be published as a book. With her permission, I’ll quote a couple of her important insights.

The most important is that Democrats have been losing the white working class, but place acts as an intensifier. If white working-class voters feel abandoned by the economy and disdained by liberal political elites, that is doubly true for working-class rural voters. Their communities as well as their livelihoods have been squandered, and they have had little evidence that Democrats cared. “Place itself has become political,” Steele writes. (emphasis mine)

As late as 2008, according to Steele’s tabulations, 139 rural white working-class counties voted Democratic. By 2016, that fell to six. In 2016, rural white working-class counties favored Trump by a margin of over 51 points. Much of the loss came in the Upper Midwest—Iowa, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota—where national elections and control of Congress are determined.

Steele’s extensive interviews with rural working-class voters also reveal a bitter paradox for Democrats. As good jobs have disappeared, people in communities that once took pride in their self-sufficiency express a broad sense that the work ethic has deteriorated along with the job loss. Instead of crediting Democrats for safety-net programs that save people from destitution, many rural working-class voters, who see their neighbors and their children on the dole, blame Democrats for eroding the work ethic.

IN 2022, THE BEST OF THE DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATES resolved to reverse this syndrome. Just showing up turns out to be hugely important, as a sign of respect and commitment.

John Fetterman’s successful slogan and strategy was “Every County, Every Vote.” Fetterman improved upon Biden’s 2020 rural support by 2.4 percent. According to tabulations by the Daily Yonder, this swing, combined with higher rural turnout for Fetterman, resulted in a net rural gain over Biden of more than 110,000 votes.

The column also talks details of Michigan, Wisconsin and Kansas.  Kuttner cites to his own September piece about the role of rural organizers, a topic I've also taken up on this blog and in my own writing about the Democrats' lackluster effort to win back the rural vote.  

Among the most creative approaches I’ve seen to recruit activists and voters on the ground, especially in rural areas, is a group called Movement Labs, founded in 2017. Movement Labs provides data, technology, and strategy to help grassroots voter mobilization, especially in red and purple states and rural counties that Democrats tend to write off. One of their marquee projects is called Rural Power Lab.

* * *  

Another key insight is that affinity for the Democratic Party may be depressed in many rural areas, but it is far from extinct, and can be rebuilt.

The Nation also published a piece this week on the rural vote.  It's titled "Democrats Must Do Better in Rural America."  Here's an excerpt from the piece by Anthony Flaccavento, Erica Etelson and Cody Lonning:  

Rural races are different from urban and suburban races; running competitively in them requires a different approach in both style and substance. Two-thirds of rural voters hold Democrats in low esteem and are profoundly antagonized by liberal elites who scorn the “rubes of flyover country.” Though Democrats’ rural deficit runs deep, it’s important to remember that as recently as 2008, Barack Obama garnered 43 percent of rural votes. And this cycle, John Fetterman’s consistent presence in rural places produced a two-and-a-half-point improvement over the 2020 presidential race—enough for him to win statewide in Pennsylvania.

“Can Democrats Succeed in Rural America?” describes more than a dozen strategies used by rural candidates and office holders, four of which we highlight here.

First, candidates must have local credibility. Whether through generational ties to the area or long-standing community involvement and problem solving, Democrats fare better when they have local roots and are fluent in the concerns and values of the people living there.

Second, candidates put local concerns and issues first, rather than trying to mobilize people around their own—or their party’s—policy agenda. ...[I]t means respecting voters enough to put their priorities at the center of the campaign. In so doing, candidates sometimes find meaningful ways to tackle state and national issues by drawing upon local experience, as when a candidate in rural Appalachia stood up for local businesses by fighting the outrageous subsidies used to recruit big box competitors.

Third, candidates and campaigns seek people where they are, rather than strictly following the advice to “go where the votes are.” Canvassing and phone-banking strategies typically focus on people who vote regularly and lean Democrat. By contrast, many of our study’s successful candidates reached out to people usually overlooked by campaigns.

Fourth, successful candidates listen more and talk less.

Another major piece, this one focusing on John Fetterman, appeared in the Washington Post's Plumline.  Here's the heart of Greg Sargent's column:

Fetterman’s victory might be uniquely instructive. He defeated a candidate, Mehmet Oz, who was conventionally stronger than those other Democrats’ opponents. 

* * *  

How this happened is illustrated by the [American Communities Project] data. Fetterman significantly reduced his opponent’s margins of victory — relative to Biden’s 2020 performance against Trump — in three types of counties where Trump has done extraordinarily well.

In the ACP’s taxonomy, those three county types are known as the Middle Suburbs, Working Class Country, and Rural Middle America.

The Middle Suburbs.  These types of suburban counties are Whiter and more working class than your typical inner-ring suburb, which tends to be more diverse, cosmopolitan and professional.

We often think of the suburbs as anti-Trump, but his large margins in Middle Suburbs across the country were key to his 2016 victory.

* * *

In Pennsylvania’s Middle Suburbs, Fetterman limited Oz’s margin of victory to 11 points, significantly down from the 15-point margin Trump racked up in 2020, according to ACP data provided to me.

* * * 

Working Class Country.  These counties are even Whiter than Middle Suburbs and tend to be rural and sparsely populated. They often have low college education rates.

In Pennsylvania’s Working Class Country counties, Fetterman shaved Oz’s margin of victory to 27 points, down from Trump’s 2020 margin of 36 points. Such counties include ones along the state’s northern border or in the southwest corner of the state, abutting West Virginia.

Rural Middle America.  These counties are also rural, but also tend to include a lot of small towns and smaller metro areas. They are somewhat less agriculture-dependent than Working Class Country.

In Pennsylvania’s Rural Middle America counties, Fetterman limited Oz’s gains to 31 points, down from Trump’s 37-point margin in 2020. As Chinni noted, nearly three dozen of these counties are spread throughout Pennsylvania’s vast heartland. 

Meanwhile, Nancy Pelosi, long-time Speaker of the House, has indicated she will no longer seek to be part of the Democratic leadership.  This led to a few Tweets by Matt Barron, a political consultant whose Twitter handle is "Mr. Rural."  You can see these below.  The first is about the likely new house leadership, including Hakeem Jeffries of New York, Katherine Clark of Massachusetts, and Pete Aguilar of California.  

Matt Barron writes:  "So the new House Democratic Leadership will be from NY (45th most-rural state), MA (47th most-rural state) and CA (49th most-rural state).  Democrats really have become the party of the coasts."

The second Barron tweet is about Pelosi's failures:  "Great news.  This is the woman that disbanded the House Democratic Rural Working Group in 2011 and would not enable the creation of a Rural Desk at the DCCC.  Take Hoyer and Clyburn with ya."

 

Meanwhile, the 134 PAC in West Texas has been tweeting about future strategy for rural organizers, here and here:

The first says, "We aren't asking for resources from the central party as they have never provided any.  Our work is to raise the resources ourselves to do what the party does not or cannot do."

The second says:  "The priority for rural Democrats should be to forget about statewide and national elections and focus solely on building up our local organizations and communities."

Lastly, I'll just note that Adam Frisch (D), who ran against Lauren Boebert (R, incumbent) in mostly rural and exurban CO-03 (western and southern parts of the state), has conceded the race to Boebert.  He did so even though he lost by just about 500 votes and was entitled to a recount.  Indeed, NPR is reporting that the recount will go ahead regardless of Frish's concession--and that Frisch has already re-filed to run against Boebert again in 2024.

Cross-posted to Working-Class Whites and the Law.  

Postscript.  Here's a piece by George Goehl in Newsweek, and another about the rural vote by The National, from before the election.