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Republicans won small towns and rural areas by only 16 points in Tuesday's midterms, half of their 32-point margin in 2024 and close to the 14-point edge they held in the 2018 blue wave, according to exit polling.
The shift helped Democrats take both chambers of Congress and win Senate seats in farm states that had long been out of reach, including Iowa, Kansas and Texas. Polls had shown much of it coming for months, as diesel prices, tariffs and the cost of living squeezed rural households.
"This year has been one of the worst farming years of my 43 year career," John Boyd Jr., founder of the National Black Farmers Association, told Newsweek. Boyd said he was due in court on Thursday over a $41,000 fertilizer bill he does not have the money to pay.
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While it was a tough night for Republicans, rural voters still favored the party, 57 percent to 41 percent, and it is too early to know how much of Tuesday's move will stick.
How Rural America Voted in Election 2026
Measures of the swing differ, though all point the same way. The Fox News Voter Poll found rural voters went from backing President Donald Trump by 28 points in 2024 to Republican House candidates by 18 points on Tuesday. A Pew Research Center analysis cited by Reuters put Trump's 2024 rural margin even higher, at 40 points.
County returns back that up. A Washington Post analysis found rural counties moved more than 15 points toward Democrats compared with 2024. Across more than 1,500 rural counties where nearly all ballots had been counted by Wednesday, Republican candidates ran 8 points behind Trump's 2024 vote share, according to totals compiled by Reuters and USA Today.
Kansas elected its first Democratic senator since 1932. Adam Hamilton beat Republican Senator Roger Marshall, leaning on the Kansas City suburbs while the state's rural west and center also moved left, the Post reported. In Seward County, where about half of eligible voters are Hispanic, Hamilton won by 13 points two years after Trump carried it by 39, according to Reuters.
Iowa's Senate race moved about 17 points toward Democrats from the 2024 presidential result, according to NBC News, as Democrat Josh Turek defeated Republican Representative Ashley Hinson. Every one of Texas' 171 rural counties shifted toward Democrats in the governor and Senate races, a Daily Yonder analysis found.
In South Carolina, Democrat Annie Andrews ousted Republican Senator Darline Graham with the help of about 138,500 rural votes, according to the Yonder. In Mississippi, Democrat Scott Colom leads Republican Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith by a shade under 2,000 votes in a race that remains uncalled.
Nebraska Senator Pete Ricketts, a Republican, held off independent Dan Osborn by about 7 points, and Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Mike Naig, also a Republican, won reelection.
What the Polls Showed Beforehand
FiftyPlusOne's average of generic ballot cross tabs had Republicans ahead by 13 points among rural voters in August and by 12 on October 30. The direction was right, though the average ran about 4 points shy of figures from the exit polling.
The site's authors flagged that risk before the election, noting that a surplus of Republican respondents in bluer areas could be creating "a bit of a mirage" among rural voters.
In a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted June 3 to 8, Trump's rural approval fell to 50 percent from 60 percent in February 2025, while disapproval rose to 48 percent from 34 percent. Rural respondents disapproved of his handling of the economy and cost of living 61 percent to 31 percent. The poll had a margin of error of 3 points for rural respondents. A Fox News poll in May put Trump's rural net approval at minus 14, down from plus 20 in early 2025.
A KFF/Associated Press (AP) survey of 2,241 rural registered voters, conducted August 12 to 24 with a margin of error of 3 points, found 48 percent approved of Trump. It also pointed to the turnout gap that followed: 80 percent of rural Democrats said they were absolutely certain to vote, compared with 74 percent of rural Republicans. Among rural Republicans who disapproved of Trump on the economy, that figure fell to 59 percent.
Rural subgroups are small and jumpy. Echelon Insights had Trump's rural approval at 40 percent in September and 50 percent in October, and individual polls in April ranged from Republicans up 30 to Republicans up 9.
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How Costs Hit Rural America
Cost of living was the top issue rural voters wanted candidates to discuss, according to KFF/AP. Three-quarters rated the cost of living in their area as fair or poor, 25 points higher than in 2017.
The Iran war and tariffs drove much of that squeeze. After U.S. and Israeli strikes began on February 28, traffic slowed sharply through the Strait of Hormuz, which carries roughly 20 percent of the world's daily oil and a third of its nitrogen fertilizer. Urea barge prices at the Port of New Orleans rose from $475 per ton the week before the strikes to $673 by March 6, Newsweek reported.
Farmers were already hurting from the trade war. Tariffs raised the cost of equipment and parts, and the fight with China, the top buyer of U.S. soybeans, cut into crop sales.
Fuel hit rural households especially hard, since rural Americans drive more on average than urban Americans. Diesel averaged roughly $3.60 a gallon before the Iran war and about $6.27 by October, Talk Business & Politics reported. In the Midwest, it peaked at $6.68. Trump's approval had fallen underwater in most of the biggest farm states by September.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture's September forecast put net farm income at $158.4 billion in 2026, down 5.5 percent from 2025 after inflation. Federal court data shows 292 Chapter 12 farm bankruptcies through the first three quarters of the year, nearly 19 percent more than a year earlier.
Boyd said input costs doubled for farmers and called the price of diesel "a deal breaker."
"So the farming crisis that Trump put farmers in is personal for me," he said. "You will see many farms on the auction block in the coming months, the farm auction train has already left the station."
The White House told Newsweek in March that the pain would pass. "As the president said, these impacts are temporary, and the best is yet to come for our great farmers," spokesperson Anna Kelly said at the time.
Derrell Peel, agricultural economist at Oklahoma State University, said the economy has since remained "a significant struggle."
"We've got record or near-record energy prices," Peel told Newsweek. He added that he works more closely with cattle than crops, but said: "I don't think there's been any appreciable relief in fertilizer prices."
Cattle prices set records in the first half of the year, Peel said, before a sharp correction from July through September. He tied much of that drop to trade policy, imports and the border, and described the turmoil as coming mainly "from a political standpoint."
About six in 10 voters in the Fox News poll said that taking military action in Iran was the wrong decision. About two-thirds said Trump's tariffs hurt the national economy, and nearly as many said they hurt their local economy.
Temperature of Trump Support Among Rural Voters
Boyd said many white farmers stayed home because they were upset with Trump, while Black farmers voted early. Turnout data remains incomplete. In Texas, rural turnout rose from 40.37 percent in 2022 to 41.55 percent, while metro turnout climbed further, to 50.52 percent, according to the Daily Yonder.
Peel, who stressed he is not a political analyst, called the vote "a reaction to what we've been through."
"I don't know that I would say that much of the rural part of the country has fundamentally [shifted] to Democratic," he said. "It's certainly temporary for now, but could it have permanent impacts? I think it's possible that it could."
On the cost of living, Democrats still trail. Rural voters trusted Republicans over Democrats 40 percent to 25 percent in the KFF/AP survey, while 27 percent trusted neither party.
Boyd said it is the first time he has seen such a dramatic shift in voting toward Democrats.
"The Democrats have a chance to put some legislation in place to help struggling farmers and rural America," he said. "If they don't act, you will see them lose in 2028."
Newsweek’s reporters and editors used Martyn, our AI assistant, to produce this story. Learn more about Martyn here. Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Jason Lemon and Edward T. Cummins
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