The decline of rural Democrats

Maps show a problem the party will face in 2026, 2028 and beyond.

A chart posted on X by Michael C. Dawson, a self-described “election statistics junkie,” illustrates a little-noticed factor in the 2024 election. I don’t know Dawson, but this is a really useful bit of work.

It shows, among other things, why President-elect Trump’s Cabinet choices and budget preferences will be voted on by a Republican Senate instead of a Democratic one.

The chart shows Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown’s four U.S. Senate elections, three that he won and the one he finally lost. You’ll notice that Brown’s vote totals don’t really change that much; but his margins get smaller and finally vanish.

Even more eye-catching is the steady decline of the number of counties Brown won; and if you know a little of the geography of Ohio, it’s quite revealing. Brown used to win a lot of rural counties, only to see a steady retreat of counties in blue. For purposes of comparison, here’s the Ohio Department of Transportation map of the state.

The yellow areas are the major metros—Cleveland/Akron to the northeast, Toledo to the northwest, Columbus in the middle, Dayton and Cincinnati to the southwest.

The other parts of the map consist of small cities and rural areas, particularly the Appalachian region along the Ohio River to the southeast, where there is no major metro.

In 2006, Brown won a lot of rural counties, including a broad band several counties deep in Appalachia. In 2012 and 2018 he won fewer, and by 2024 he triumphed in no rural counties, none. He won only around Cleveland, Toledo, Columbus, Dayton.

Something similar is true in a number of states. Missouri comes to mind: It used to be a presidential swing state that also sent many Democrats to the Senate. In 2000, Democratic Senate candidate Mel Carnahan died shortly before the election and still won, unseating an incumbent; Democrats distributed bumper stickers reading STILL WITH MEL and elected him with the understanding that his widow Jean would be appointed to the seat.

Jean Carnahan lost a special election to a Republican in 2002; but in 2006 Democrat Claire McCaskill won the seat back for her party. In 2012 she won a second term, and thanks to Wikipedia we can see McCaskill prevailed in rural counties all over the state:

Even though Missouri had become a red state in presidential elections by then, a Democrat could compete down ballot.

By 2018, this had changed. Republicans nationwide were weighed down by Donald Trump, an unpopular president, yet Republican Josh Hawley won in Missouri. McCaskill was beaten back into three metro areas: St. Louis to the east, Kansas City to the west, and Columbia toward the middle.

In 2024, Hawley ran for re-election and got nearly the same results on the map.

Do you mind if I give you one more? In 2018, Democrat Joe Manchin won re-election in West Virginia, and again Wikipedia shows a solid range of counties in his column. The deepest blue areas are around Charleston and Huntington, the bigger cities toward the west, but he was competitive all over that mountainous state.

In 2024, Manchin retired. See if you can spot the change in the map.

Here’s what I draw from these and other examples. In 2004, the last time that Democrats faced a rebuilding period, they resolved on a “fifty-state strategy” designed to attract voters both urban and rural. It was a matter of candidates, resources, and messaging. In the years that followed, they enjoyed some success, picking off the occasional red state in a presidential election (Indiana in 2008), turning a few red states purple (Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia), winning a lot of swing states, prevailing in the presidential popular vote four times in a row, and, most years, controlling the Senate majority.

But over time their rural vote eroded. Then it collapsed. This diminished their chances of winning the presidency and made the math next to impossible for holding the Senate. A Senate with Joe Manchin, and Montana’s Jon Tester, and plausibly a Democrat from Missouri, among other places, was one that Democrats had a better than even chance of controlling.

A Senate without Manchin or Tester, and with no chance of a Democrat from Missouri (they ran a vigorous challenger in 2024 who still lost to Hawley by a lot) is a Republican Senate.

Connecticut’s Chris Murphy, in a post-election lament, said that Democrats now have a ceiling of 52 Senators, meaning they are only competitive in a little more than half the seats and would have to win almost all of them to gain a majority. It’s hard to look at the 2026 election map and see where Democrats would pick up the four seats they need to take control.

We could talk at length about why the rural vote has swung so far to the Republican side—cultural issues, economic change, Democratic messaging, lack of attention, generational change, the decline of ticket splitting, Donald Trump. It seems pretty clear that Republicans have been very effective in drawing out new and infrequent voters, too.

For now I’ll just note: as Democrats try to rebuild for future elections, they’ll face a reality of the map. They need to grow their vote share in rural areas—cut down the enormous Republican margins there, and even win some counties—or they will struggle to win at all.

Thanks for reading Differ We Must, my companion to the book of the same name. The paperback is due February 11! Can’t wait to share it with you.