Dem
47
GOP
53
Democrats are not only active in the TN-07 special election. They are also engaging in an eight-digit campaign called "Our Power, Our Country," to win back voters of color and rural voters they lost in 2024. DCCC Chair Suzan DelBene (D-WA) is leading the charge. She is attacking Republicans on health care, gerrymandering, tariffs, and Medicaid, issues that play well in many rural areas. She knows this from the election results in New Jersey and Virginia, where the Democratic gubernatorial candidates greatly overperformed the 2024 House candidates in rural areas and urban Latino areas.
DelBene said that the DCCC already has a full-time staffer who will focus on working with community leaders in rural districts that are potentially in play. She said that populist economic policies, like anti-monopoly, antitrust, pro-union, and investment-in-infrastructure, play well in rural areas, and she wants to exploit these things to the max.
It won't be easy, though, since 69% of the voters in rural areas across the country voted for Donald Trump in 2024. To some extent, that is because Democrats simply never show up to make the case that Republicans hate them and never do anything for them. When Democrats show up and note that Republican policies are likely to make the only hospital in their county close, the voters listen. But the Democrats have to show up. Also, in Senate and other statewide races, losing a rural district by 5,000 fewer votes just as valuable as gaining 5,000 votes in some urban districts of equal population. And it may be easier to do, since the urban areas are already so blue.
Nicolas Jacobs, a political scientist at Colby College in Maine, said that Democrats have not only dismissed rural voters, they have actively pushed them away when they abandoned their 50-state strategy. He said going after rural voters might not pay off for 5-10 years, but many of them could eventually be won over on economic grounds and that won't happen until they start making the effort.
To make the point that rural areas are not inherently Republican, compare the 1964 presidential results by county with those of 2024.
Outside of the deep South, where race dominated everything, Democrats did pretty well in most rural counties in 1964. They could do so again if they actually went there and talked about how the government could help people with health care, jobs, broadband Internet, and more, but it would take time, effort, and actually doing things when they had the chance. (V)