Ag Policy Blog

When DTN/The Progressive Farmer got back the numbers for the Pulse of Rural America Poll it looked at first like the numbers were skewed too much for now President-elect Donald J Trump.

The survey of 1,393 rural Americans, done in late August and early September, showed nearly 70% support Trump while 19% supported Vice President Kamala Harris.

In the end, it was a closer representation of voters' views than we realized.

One of the most telling signs about President-elect Donald Trump's relationship with rural America wasn't from a poll this fall, but a trip to Branson, Mo.

I visited Branson last month with my wife for a weekend to enjoy the weather and fall colors. Along Branson's main strip on Highway 76 there were two separate Trump stores. They sold nothing else but hats, shirts, signs and flags with Trump or Trump/Vance on them. In the Landing, a downtown shopping area, there was a kiosk selling strictly Trump items and several other stores also sold Trump memorabilia.

I mentioned stores to my mother who told me I should see the Trump store at the Lake of the Ozarks.

There just isn't a political personality in recent memory that rural Americans embrace quite like Trump.

The polling and support for Trump was not well identified or respected by pollsters, but it showed up loud and clear this week. The presidential race was supposed to be close. The swing states were supposed to be divided and a lot of people didn't think the country would know who won for several days.

None of that played out as expected.

In Iowa, the Des Moines Register had a news article and editorial stating pollster Ann Selzer will review every aspect of "what went wrong" with the Iowa Poll. As DTN reported, the Iowa Poll showed just last week Harris leading Trump in the state – within the margin of error. A separate poll showed Trump ahead in Iowa by ten points. Trump won the state by 13 points. Harris won just five counties – urban areas – while Trump pulled 70% or more of the vote in at least 40 of Iowa's 99 counties.

Looking at the "blue wall" of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, they are all pretty red too. There were rural counties in Pennsylvania with 30,000-40,000 votes cast where Trump won with 75% or more of the vote.

There were a few things we could have done better in the Pulse of Rural America poll. The numbers showed 72% of people saw agriculture as worse off than four years ago. And 77% of those polled saw the rural economy as "not so good" or "bad."

The poll didn't ask about specific issues such as interest rates. The first farmer I interviewed for the article was a young producer in Nebraska who talked about the high costs of operating loans.

As the election showed, people nationally are concerned about their pocketbooks. Inflation and higher interest rates affect more than just agriculture and it shows.

The Biden administration was slow to respond to illegal immigration. When Biden did move to stop the flow, MAGA Republicans refused to play along, allowing illegal immigration to remain a common theme in stump speeches, political advertisements up and down the ballot, and on right wing media outlets. A lot of Republicans campaigned against any path to legalization for the millions of undocumented workers here. Immigration bothered rural Americans, even though about 10% of respondents to the Pulse of Rural America poll cited the lack of affordable labor as their biggest challenge. It will be interesting to see how the Trump administration balances aggressive enforcement against illegal immigrants with the needs of the rural workforce.

Overall, though, the Pulse of Rural America ended up as a pretty close reflection of the concerns of farmers going into the ballot box.

See, "Pulse of Rural America," https://www.dtnpf.com/…

Chris Clayton can be reached at Chris.Clayton@dtn.com

Follow him on social platform X @ChrisClaytonDTN

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