Modest Changes in Rural Voting Could Have Significant Implications in 2024

In this brief, authors Dante Scala and Kenneth Johnson estimate how much a slightly better (or worse) performance by the candidates in the rural areas of seven battleground states could influence the outcome of the 2024 election. They focus on partisan polarization along the rural-urban continuum and on the significant decline in support of Democratic Presidential candidates in these states over the past several elections. Rural voters are a modest share of all voters in the battleground states ranging from just 5 percent in Arizona to 26 percent in Wisconsin. How much would a small incremental change of plus or minus 3 percent in support in rural areas over 2020 levels influence the outcome of the 2024 election? Enough to make the difference between victory and defeat in several of the battleground states, according to their estimates. Thus, even though rural voters represent a modest share of all voters in these battleground states, small changes in the voting behavior of rural voters in 2024 could have major implications for the outcome of the election.