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By Andrew Stanton
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President Donald Trump’s approval rating among rural voters has fallen by 32 percentage points since he returned to the White House, according to a new poll.
Trump’s net approval rating among rural voters stood at -10 points in a new poll from NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist released on Thursday, marking a significant downturn in support from a voting bloc that was a key part of the coalition that bolstered his successful 2024 presidential campaign.
The poll could be a major red flag for Republicans ahead of the 2026 midterm election. Historically, the party in the White House loses seats in midterms, and the GOP already holds razor-thin majorities in both chambers of Congress. Trump’s standing with rural voters could help shape key Senate and House races. The president won rural voters by a wide margin in 2024, getting 64 percent of the vote from the bloc compared to former Vice President Kamala Harris’ 34 percent, according to CNN exit polling.
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Trump’s Slipping Rural Support
The -10 net approval rating among rural voters is down significantly from +22 points in February 2025, the first month after he returned to office, according to NPR. In total, 43 percent of rural Americans said they approved of Trump, compared with 53 percent who said they disapproved of his job performance.
Despite the drop, rural voters were still the president's strongest group. His approval among those living in big cities stood at -37 points. His net approval was -18 points among those in small cities, -26 points among those in suburbs and -19 points among those in small towns, the poll found.
Overall, his approval rating stood at 36 percent, while 59 percent said they disapproved of the president. The poll surveyed 1,340 adults from June 8 to June 11, 2026, and carried a margin of error of plus or minus 3.3 percentage points.
Why Has Trump’s Approval Fallen Among Rural Americans? Experts Weigh In
Rural Americans may be particularly affected by higher gas prices amid the Iran war because they have to travel further to go places than people living in cities or suburbs, Suzanne Mettler, professor of government at Cornell University and a co-author of Rural Versus Urban: The Growing Divide That Threatens Democracy, told Newsweek.
“As well, many farmers have been adversely affected by tariffs,” she said. “Changes to Medicaid are also likely to be harming many rural residents, who particularly rely on the program for health care.”
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Tim Slack, a professor of Sociology at Louisiana State University, told Newsweek the economy is central to Trump’s declining approval rating among rural Americans, who already tend to have lower incomes than urbanites.
“Rural Americans are hurting economically and have been for decades. President Trump promised to lower prices on day one. Instead, prices have continued to climb,” he said.
In addition to gas prices, Slack pointed to the cost of food as a major factor that could be contributing to this trend.
“In addition to high fuel and transportation costs hitting harder, high food prices are also a big deal for rural Americans. Rural folks often pay more for groceries than people in urban areas do for reasons including a lack of large chain competition and higher transportation costs for distributors. And, again, the need to drive longer distances to reach full-service supermarkets,” he said.
Wage growth in rural parts of the country has also “lagged behind the rest of the country,” so those communities are feeling a “unique squeeze,” Dan Shea, a professor of political science at Colby College and a co-author of The Rural Voter: The Politics of Place and the Disuniting of America, told Newsweek.
“The economic relief they thought was coming hasn't reached their gas tanks or paychecks, and that financial frustration is starting to reflect in the poll numbers,” he said.
Rural Voters Disapprove of Trump on Economy
The new poll found that 39 percent of rural Americans, and 33 percent of Americans overall, approve of Trump’s handling of the economy, a sign that negative views of the economy could be chipping away at his support. Concerns about the cost of living and inflation have often been polled as the top issues for Americans.
Trump’s approval rating is also being shaped by Americans’ reactions to the Iran war. The impact the conflict has had on gas prices has particularly garnered economic concerns in recent weeks.
How the new peace deal to bring an end to the war will shape his approval remains to be seen.
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White House spokesperson Kush Desai told Newsweek that Trump has “been clear about the fact that oil and gas prices—and thus overall inflation—will rapidly drop as soon as the Iran situation is resolved.”
“Prior to the start of Operation Epic Fury, American workers had recovered almost half of the real wage losses they experienced under Joe Biden thanks to this Administration’s commonsense agenda of deregulation, tax cuts, and energy abundance—an agenda that the Administration continues to implement to deliver more economic relief for the American people,” he said.
What This Means for Midterms
Trump will be a major factor in this year’s elections, when Democrats are hoping to reclaim a majority of seats in both the House of Representatives and Senate. Midterms are usually seen as a referendum on the party of a sitting president, so Republicans will be concerned with how popular Trump is in November.
In 2018, during Trump's first term midterms, Democrats gained 41 seats in the House and swept back into control. They lost seats against an unfavorable Senate map, but the large swing in the House helped them fight administration policies.
If disaffected rural voters cast their ballots for Democrats or even sit out the midterms, Republicans could struggle in a number of key races. Rural voters are a key bloc in several major Senate races, including Maine, where GOP Senator Susan Collins is facing a challenge from progressive Democrat Graham Platner. Sixty-one percent of Mainers live in rural areas, according to 2020 Census data.
The political landscape in rural America isn’t “set in stone,” Shea said, noting that Democrats likely see an opening in rural parts of the country. The main challenge Republicans will face this year is an “enthusiasm gap” among their rural voters.
“Dissatisfied, true-believing Trump supporters aren’t going to vote for a Democrat—they are simply going to stay home,” he said. “And Democrats don't need to win these deep-red counties to see a big boost. If frustrated rural voters sit on the sidelines, as I think they will, Democrats may see much more encouraging numbers in places that have become total ghost towns for them.”
Rural voters who were “disenchanted” by Democrats are more likely to stay home than vote for Democrats, Mettler said.
“The Democratic Party has lost credibility among these voters over many years, and that is unlikely to be reversed unless the party works hard to regain their trust,” she said. “That would take long-term organizing, with efforts to listen to and understand rural voters and respond effectively to their needs.”
Rural voters could also play a major role in Senate races like North Carolina, Ohio and Texas, all of which have millions of rural voters who could help decide not only the outcome of those races but control of the Senate.
Prediction markets already suggest Democrats are in a strong position to control the House of Representatives. Democrats had a 77 percent chance of victory in the House on Kalshi and an 81 percent chance on Polymarket as of Thursday. For the Senate, where Democrats face a more difficult map, Republicans had a 58 percent chance on Kalshi and a 56 percent chance on Polymarket of winning a majority.
How Rural America Became GOP Stronghold
Although rural voters were once less solidly Republican, several changes in the economy began a rightward shift in the 1990s. Many rural voters have begun to believe the Democratic Party is "run by elites who had little understanding of or respect for them and their communities,” Mettler said. The decline of labor unions in many rural areas and other organizational trends “cemented” that trend, she said.
Shea said that many rural voters “interpret politics through a deeply place-based lens” and believe Democrats have “let them down.”
“Think of it this way: if you want to understand the modern rural electorate, take the general economic anxiety and political resentment that many Americans are feeling right now, double it, and stretch it back two full decades. That's the rural voter today,” he said.
The rightward shift of rural America has been a “long-term process,” Slack said.
“The last time rural and urban Americans had similar preferences in a presidential race was in 1976 when Jimmy Carter was elected. Rural-urban voting preferences have differed increasingly since then,” he said. “This has been driven by a confluence of factors including realignment of the White working class and the South from the Democrat to Republican column.”
He pointed to “rural resentment,” the feeling that lawmakers ignore rural areas, as a “very real” phenomenon driving this shift.
“Suggestions that rural people vote ‘against their own interests’ or vote ‘the wrong way,’ essentially that they are rubes, feed into this,” he said.
What Do Other Polls Show?
A recent poll from Harris and the Center for American Political Studies at Harvard University showed a similar trend. The president’s approval among rural voters stood at -4 points, with 45 percent approving and 49 percent disapproving of his job performance. It surveyed 1,725 registered voters May 29-31 and had a margin of error of plus or minus 2.4 percentage points.
In February 2025, the same pollster found that 58 percent of rural voters approved of Trump compared to 35 percent who disapproved.
On the other hand, a Quantus Insights poll found that his approval rating was still positive among rural voters. In that survey, 54 percent approved of him, compared with 43 percent who disapproved. It surveyed 1,050 Americans from June 1-2. A Quantus Insights from June 2025, for comparison, found that 52 percent of rural voters approved of Trump, while 46 percent disapproved.
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