WASHINGTON — About half of rural American voters believe the economy is worse off now than when President Donald Trump returned to office, according to a new survey that points to economic frustration among a key group that has backed Trump and other Republicans in recent elections.
The Associated Press, in partnership with KFF, polled more than 2,000 rural registered voters and found broadly negative views of the national and local economies, including among many Republicans. The costs of groceries, gas and healthcare rank as top pain points for the rural voters, who were surveyed over two weeks starting in mid-August. And a larger share than among voters overall say they are worried about being able to afford groceries or gas.
At the same time, about half of rural voters approve of Trump’s job performance, more than among U.S. adults overall in separate AP-NORC polling.
The findings suggest that many rural voters haven’t turned on Trump but that they also largely don’t think he has delivered the economic renaissance he promised on the campaign trail.
Ed Westrick, a registered Republican and veteran, rates Trump’s job performance as “mediocre, middle-of-the-road.” Westrick, who lives in rural Texas, isn’t sure he will cast a midterm ballot, a troubling sign for Republicans in a key state in their fight to keep control of Congress.
Rural Americans skew Republican and historically have been an instrumental group of voters for Trump. The survey reveals that while rural voters seem unlikely to support Democrats on a large scale, Trump and the Republican Party could face challenges with them in November.
Rural voters are deeply unhappy about the economy
As the election approaches, only about 4 in 10 rural voters approve of Trump’s performance on the economy. They rate him similarly on his handling of the Iran war, an entanglement that has proved expensive for the U.S. and increased oil and gas prices. And rural voters rank pocketbook concerns and fraud in government programs higher among the things they want to hear about from politicians than other perennial issues, such as gun policy and abortion.
Westrick, 59, is a technical trainer in the electronics industry and has seen an increase in business in part because he works with defense contractors, but he said he’s concerned about the cost of living.
“I hear the politicians talk about making groceries more affordable and making healthcare more affordable, but yet none of them are addressing the issues,” Westrick said.
In the poll, about three-quarters of rural voters rated the cost of living in their communities as “only fair” or “poor” — a 25 percentage point rise from a similar question asked in a KFF-Washington Post survey in 2017. Rural Americans, who have consistently lower wages than those who live in suburban and metro areas, have been hurting economically for decades, according to Tim Slack, a professor of sociology at Louisiana State University and co-author of the book “Rural and Small-Town America.”
“Many folks are connecting the cost-of-living crisis to many of the Trump administration’s policy choices: the war in Iran, tariffs, trade wars,” he said. “None of those things are going to bring down prices at the pump or the local Walmart.”
“Trump promised to lower prices on Day 1, and instead the cost of living’s continued to climb. And that’s especially painful in rural America,” Slack said, adding that he expects many working-class Republicans to skip voting in November.
Rural Republicans do have a brighter economic perspective than rural Democrats or independents, particularly about the U.S. as a whole, according to the survey. About 6 in 10 rural Republican voters say Trump has improved the national economy, compared with only about 2 in 10 independents and fewer than 1 in 10 Democrats.
But only 45% of rural Republican voters say Trump has made their local economies better off. About 1 in 4 said there are fewer good-paying jobs where they live than five years ago.
In Michigan, 37-year-old independent voter Brittainy Sosebee said she isn’t sure if she will vote in the state’s midterm election, which includes a tight Senate race seen as crucial to the Democratic Party’s push to win back a majority. Sosebee voted for Trump in 2016 and Democratic candidate Joe Biden in 2020; she didn’t vote in 2024.
Sosebee, who lives in St. Johns, a small town just north of Lansing, said she used to have extra money to take a vacation or buy a new pair of jeans without worrying. Now, she scrutinizes every expense, cringing at the rising cost of fresh produce when she shops for her three children.
“We hunt, so we have a lot of venison and things like that, so we don’t have to buy meat from the grocery store, but it’s still crippling,” she said.
Healthcare policies go unnoticed
The AP-KFF poll found that rural voters overall don’t perceive much positive impact from the Trump administration’s healthcare policies even as they have been a top priority for Republican leaders, who have promoted efforts to lower drug costs and touted a $50 billion rural health program.
Only 17% of the voters said the Trump administration’s healthcare policies have had a “positive impact” on their healthcare costs, while 41% said they’ve had “no impact” and another 41% said they’ve had a “negative impact.”
Sitting on her front porch in Woolwich, Maine, 71-year-old Democrat Kathleen Hanning sipped a chai tea latte in the sun and recalled how she stopped voting for Republican Sen. Susan Collins in 2020.
Collins and Trump are “intertwined,” Hanning said. “She is not independently voting on what’s best for Maine.”
Hanning, a retired federal worker, said she hadn’t paid much attention to the health policies in Trump’s signature tax breaks and spending cuts bill passed last year. The law reduces federal Medicaid spending by roughly $900 billion over a decade but also includes billions of dollars for the Rural Health Transformation Program, which it created.
A year after the law’s passage, more than 8 in 10 rural voters said they’d heard either “a little” or “nothing at all” about the health fund. About 60% said they had heard nothing, according to the survey.
Rather than transforming, Hanning said, “hospitals up here in Maine are consolidating.” She travels an hour to see a specialist and noted that mothers will now have to drive farther for care because the hospital in nearby Damariscotta announced it would soon close its labor and delivery center.
Nine in 10 rural voters said it was “extremely” or “very” important for candidates to talk about healthcare costs, with more than half saying it’s “extremely important.” Mirroring the general population, rural voters ranked healthcare costs and gas prices as top economic worries.
Rural Republican voters still trust the GOP more
When asked for the political party they trusted to do a better job handling issues such as the cost of healthcare or the cost of living, rural voters tended to side with their own party. The finding signals that Democratic candidates are more likely to benefit from rural Republicans staying home this November than from them voting across party lines in large numbers.
Republicans are more ambivalent about their party’s ability to handle key healthcare issues, compared with Democrats. About 8 in 10 Democratic voters say they trust the Democrats to address healthcare costs, while closer to 6 in 10 Republican voters say the same of the Republicans.
In Manassas, Georgia, a tiny town about an hour’s drive inland from Savannah, Republican voter Wanda Rogers feels the Trump administration is doing the best it can to clean up what she sees as an economic mess that Democrats left behind when they lost power.
“I kind of think people think like I do, that he knows what needs to be done,” she said. “It’s just taking them a while to get it there.”
Still, the 66-year-old said, “gas prices, they’re eating me alive right now.” She said she has stopped traveling to the beach because it has become too expensive.
Pamela Shaw, an independent voter who lives in a rural area near Asheville, North Carolina, said she sees the impact of rising costs in her community.
“When hamburger is over $7 a pound and steak is $15 or more a pound, a lot of people are not able to buy some of the things that they are used to buying,” the 59-year-old said in an interview.
Trump’s rural standing has slipped
Trump remains relatively popular among rural voters in the AP-KFF poll, with 48% approval — substantially higher than in a July AP-NORC poll of U.S. adults overall, in which only a third approved of his performance. But he’s also down slightly, from 56% approval, among rural voters, based on a similar question asked in the earlier KFF-Washington Post survey.
This year’s competitive elections feature key Senate races in states including Ohio, Michigan and Maine, all of which have large rural populations. In close races, Democrats may have a chance to “show up and give a message that rural people might find appealing,” said Nicholas Jacobs, a political scientist at Colby College and co-author of the book “The Rural Voter.”
“But it’s nothing more and it’s nothing less than that — an opportunity,” Jacobs said. “And time and time again, Democrats have shown a certain proclivity for not seizing that opportunity.”
Many rural voters don’t think the major parties or the president respect people like them. About half, 48%, of rural voters say the GOP respects people like them “a lot” or “some,” while 45% of rural voters say this about Trump and 37% say this about the Democratic Party.
On a recent Thursday, registered Republican Nate Lawrence answered his phone after paying $57 to fill up his Chevy Equinox in New Concord, Ohio, a village of fewer than 3,000 people about an hour’s drive east of Columbus.
Lawrence, a middle-school English teacher, said the candidates should be talking about spending power: “I need to be able to go to the store and feed my family on what I make as a teacher,” Lawrence said. “I should be able to pay for a house on a teacher’s salary.”
Lawrence has voted for Trump in the past but didn’t in 2024. For Ohio’s Senate race, Lawrence said he is torn and not sure whether to pick Democrat Sherrod Brown or Republican Jon Husted.
Still, even if the politicians say they will lower prices, Lawrence said, he won’t believe them.
“Trump said that, and it didn’t happen,” he said.
