Economic anxieties are testing the loyalty of rural voters to the Republican Party, expanding the electoral battlefield into some of the most traditionally conservative districts across the nation and raising Democratic hopes.
For a decade, farmers and ranchers have been a core part of President Trump’s coalition, voting for him by double-digit margins in all three of his presidential races. But as the impact of his tariffs and the war in Iran fuel discontent in agricultural communities across the country, the bond between the president and rural voters is beginning to fray.
The anger is palpable from the soybean farms in Mississippi to the cattle spreads in Kansas. Ranchers are seething over the administration’s decision to drop import tariffs on foreign beef. Farmers are fuming about the higher costs of tractors, fertilizer and fuel. And Republican candidates are on the defensive in places their party has not lost in a generation.
So far, there is little indication of a large-scale shift of rural voters across partisan lines. The Democratic Party remains deeply unpopular on cultural issues, and its candidates face deep skepticism on issues like abortion and transgender rights.
Yet mounting economic frustration has raised the prospect of a farmers’ protest in this year’s midterm elections, in which some of the president’s most reliable supporters could defy his plea to “pretend” he is on the ballot and simply stay home.
“If you look in 2024, you’d see Trump voters in rural areas driving 20 miles through a storm to get their vote in,” said Dee Davis, the president of the Center for Rural Strategies, a nonpartisan advocacy group. “I don’t think there’s incentive to crawl through glass to vote for Trump this year.”
Farmers across the United States have been struggling for years with high costs for land, machinery, fertilizer and seeds, while most crop prices are down significantly from their 2022 highs. While financial shifts are expected in farming, the challenging conditions have been exacerbated by federal government policies.
Tariffs have driven up the cost of steel used to make tractors and weakened some export markets, hurting soybean farmers and ranchers. The war in Iran sent fertilizer and diesel prices skyrocketing. And deep cuts made to Medicaid as part of Mr. Trump’s signature domestic policy legislation — known as the One Big Beautiful Bill — have disproportionately hurt rural hospitals, with some forced to limit their services.
The Agriculture Department projects net farm income this year will be 2.6 percent lower than in 2025, and 5.5 percent lower when accounting for inflation. Whether they grow corn, soybeans, apples or other produce, the Farm Bureau, a nonprofit that advocates for rural communities, projects that farmers will lose money on most crops through 2027. They are borrowing more money to get by, pushing farm debt to record levels.
“There has always been volatility, but the vibe is that there is a lot of induced volatility into the system that we didn’t have 10 or 20 years ago,” said Allen Shafer, a fifth-generation grain farmer in central Kansas, who has been registered with both parties over his lifetime. “I don’t hear the excitement from Republicans or Trumpsters that historically I have.”
The impact of increased costs trickles through rural economies. Mechanics, parts stores, community banks, car dealerships and coffee shops rely on farmers having money to spend.
“There’s just a lot of frustration,” said Shannon Butler, who has been forced to raise prices at her small feed store in eastern Colorado. “Small farmers and small homesteaders and small ranchers are closing up doors, selling their animals. They can’t afford to keep paying the prices that they’re at.”
The financial challenges facing rural communities have shifted the electoral map, transforming Senate races in Kansas, Iowa and Texas — all states long dominated by Republicans — into competitive battlegrounds. In the House, races in agricultural districts are increasingly competitive for Democrats, who are targeting nearly three dozen House districts across 22 states with ads focused on issues like Mr. Trump’s decision to import foreign beef and the shuttering of rural hospitals.
Some Democrats are cautiously tracking more difficult races in deep-red states, including Nebraska, Mississippi, South Carolina and Oklahoma, looking for openings should national conditions worsen.
The latest example of the party’s efforts came last week in Mississippi, when Scott Colom, the Democratic Senate candidate, released an ad featuring a clip of his opponent, the Republican incumbent Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith, responding to concerns about rising beef prices. Mississippians, she says, “have so many proteins to choose from.”
The video, which quickly went viral, cuts to a man grilling: “Pick another protein?” he says. “I’d rather pick another senator instead.”
The Kansas Senate race, which has grown increasingly competitive in the final weeks of the election, has emerged as an electoral barometer of the resentment toward the Trump administration.
In July, the political action committee of the Kansas Livestock Association declined to endorse Senator Roger Marshall, the incumbent Republican, despite having backed him in 2020. Officials for the organization pointed to tariffs, which Mr. Marshall supported, and the president’s comments about beef prices being too high as having frustrated Kansas ranchers.
Then, in late September, the group’s members began to complain of something unusual, inconvenient and expensive: Appointments they had made to have their cattle slaughtered were suddenly being canceled.
The cancellations, which stretched on for days and complicated the delicate timing of processing cattle, were a direct effect of high-profile immigration enforcement activity, said Matt Teagarden, the chief executive of the livestock association. The raids prompted rare pushback on the administration from ranchers in Kansas, Texas and Oklahoma.
“You have all these people living in limbo or fear of ICE, and the feedlots are wondering if anybody’s going to come to work,” said Sam Buttram, a feedlot consultant. “It is just a bad situation all the way around.”
Mr. Buttram said that he had always been a registered Republican and that he voted for Mr. Marshall in 2020. Last week, though, he helped to sponsor an event for Adam Hamilton, who appears to be within striking distance of becoming the first Democrat to win a Senate seat in Kansas since 1932. Mr. Hamilton’s speech that night drew hundreds of voters to a theater in Hutchinson, a small city in a county Mr. Trump carried by more than 30 percentage points in the last presidential election.
Mr. Buttram expressed frustration with Mr. Marshall’s allegiance to the president. “He more or less just votes in step with what Trump wants instead of thinking about what’s best for Kansas, what’s best for our state, our industries,” he said.
In recent weeks, Republicans have been trying to distance themselves from the president’s unpopular policies. Mr. Marshall criticized the administration for not coordinating immigration raids with local law enforcement. In Iowa, Representative Ashley Hinson, the Republican running for Senate, has broken with the administration on the Iran war and on Mr. Trump’s plan to import Russian diesel fuel. A number of farm state Republicans opposed Mr. Trump’s decision to import more foreign beef.
As Republicans stress their deep connections to farm country, some are also embracing a new kind of political red meat: Slamming their opponents as vegans.
In Colorado’s Eighth Congressional District, which encompasses the farms and ranches northeast of Denver, Representative Gabe Evans is attacking his Democratic challenger, Manny Rutinel, for his history of animal rights activism and “pushing veganism.”
In college, Mr. Rutinel posed shirtless and draped in a PETA banner, and at Yale Law, he described animal agriculture as a “horrific, exploitative industry,” the The Colorado Sun reported. In 2021, he founded Climate Refarm, a nonprofit that advocated for cutting down on the use of meat.
“How my farmers and ranchers feel about Democrats is there’s nothing that you can do in rural America that makes them happy,” said Mr. Evans, in an interview at a football watch party hosted by his campaign in Thornton, Colo., last Sunday. “There’s always an excuse Democrats have to dislike rural Coloradans who are raising livestock or making food.”
Mr. Rutinel, who says he is no longer a vegan, pushed back.
“Folks in Colorado don’t care about what’s on my plate,” he said in an interview at a nearby sports bar where his team was hosting another watch party targeting Latino supporters. “They care about being able to afford what’s on theirs.”
The next day, about 100 miles southeast in Calhan, Colo., where Representative Lauren Boebert, a Republican, faces a competitive re-election race, farmers, ranchers and gadflies gathered for the weekly Monday cattle auction. They had plenty to say about the higher prices.
The auction featured livestock, farm equipment and even some children’s toys. But many attendees were most interested in the bales of the hay stocked high in the small parking lot. A severe drought had reduced local production, and high diesel prices had more than doubled the cost of transporting hay from other states.
“What you’re seeing here today is a lot of people who are having to sell because gas is too high, fuel is too high, hay is too high and there’s no feed,” said Randy Lewis, a cattle auctioneer in eastern Colorado, who said he had seen more farmers selling their animals for lower prices.
As he investigated crates of chickens for sale, Arthur Ray Lambert, a horse trainer and veteran, said he did not blame Mr. Trump directly for the higher costs. But he isn’t happy with the administration and doesn’t plan to vote this year.
“We thought that the president was going to come in with his team and fix stuff,” said Mr. Lambert, 50, who has a ranch in the area. “And at first, he sounded good. But now, I hate to say it, but I think it’s time for him and his team to get out of there and somebody else come in.”
Joseph Kennedy, a cattle and sheep farmer who drove two hours for the auction, said he felt “bamboozled” by the president. He voted for Mr. Trump in 2024 because of his promise to improve the economy.
Mr. Kennedy, who lives in Beulah, Colo., said he did not plan to vote this year.
“I was a registered Republican, but now I’m a nonvoter. I unregistered to vote this year,” he said, as he watched his 3-year-old son play on a tractor inside one of the sale barns. “I’m over politics. I’ve dropped out.”
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