How Democrats Lost White, Rural America

Democrats have been engaged in a decades-long quest to figure out why White rural voters have steadily turned away from their party in favor of Republicans. Is it race, class, the economy or some mix of policy issues? The last few election cycles revealed a growing rural-urban gap, with Democrats’ power increasingly concentrated in cities — which is not sufficient to win the presidency or majorities in Congress. In the book Rural Versus Urban: The Growing Divide That Threatens Democracy, political scientists Suzanne Mettler and Trevor E. Brown explore the forces that contributed to place-based partisanship. I interviewed Brown, who is a postdoctoral associate at Johns Hopkins University and will join the University of Oregon’s political science department as an assistant professor in 2026. Our interview has been edited for length and clarity.

When did the urban-rural divide emerge?