Gigi Georges, Columnist

What Do Rural Voters Want? Democrats Just Aren’t Listening

A tour of Maine’s most agrarian county shows the flaws in the theory that Americans outside of cities vote against their self-interest.

December 17, 2021 at 1:30 PM UTC

By Gigi Georges

Gigi Georges, a former special assistant to President Bill Clinton and program director for innovation studies at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, is the author of "Downeast: Five Maine Girls and the Unseen Story of Rural America."

For Glenn Youngkin, the election was a layup.
Photographer: Al Drago/Bloomberg

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The big story of 2021’s state elections — one that set off head scratching and alarm bells across Democratic Party and media circles — was how Republicans accelerated their upward trajectory among rural voters.

Glenn Youngkin, Virginia’s Republican governor-elect, topped 70% of the vote in 45 rural counties. Republican Jack Ciattarelli doubled former President Donald Trump’s dominant 2020 margins in New Jersey’s four most rural counties to nearly defeat the incumbent Governor Phil Murphy.