If Republicans had a path to winning the Wisconsin Supreme Court election on Tuesday, it started in the rural counties that pulled Donald Trump to victory in 2016 and 2024. If the GOP-backed candidate had performed well enough there, it might have overcome voters’ displeasure with Trump’s presidency.
But it was not to be. Compared to last year’s presidential race, Republicans lost ground in every corner of the state, including rural counties. While it’s dangerous to extrapolate too much from one election, the results show that Democrats can pick up ground in rural areas — and they don’t have to grovel to do it.
The narrower margins in these GOP strongholds point to a strong case for Democrats to make to rural voters.
Tuesday’s race between liberal Susan Crawford and conservative Brad Schimel ended up looking very similar to the last high-profile Supreme Court election held in Wisconsin two years ago. The 2023 race, which took place just nine months after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, was a referendum on whether abortion rights would survive in Wisconsin. As in other states, even many Republican voters were determined to retain those rights. This year, no single policy issue dominated, but the campaign was unquestionably about the Trump administration and the influence of Elon Musk.
To assess how votes in Wisconsin changed in different areas, I compared these last three elections using the National Center for Health Statistics’ 2023 Urban-Rural Classification Scheme. This taxonomy divides counties into six types, from the largest cities to the most rural areas. If we add together the votes from “micropolitan” and “noncore” counties — roughly speaking, small towns and rural areas — we see that Trump won these areas by a 60%-38% margin in 2024, while Schimel won them by only 56%-44%.
Given that turnout is higher in presidential years, that meant Trump piled up almost 200,000 more votes than Kamala Harris in those areas, making up for deficits in the more densely populated parts of the state. In contrast, Schimel only netted 67,000 more votes than Crawford in rural areas and small towns, leaving him unable to overcome her much larger advantage in cities and suburbs.
As an example, consider rural Buffalo County, in the western part of the state, with just 13,000 residents (95% of whom are white). Harris lost the county to Trump by 30 points in 2024, but Crawford narrowed Schimel’s margin to just 16.6 points. Paired with high turnout in the more liberal cities and suburbs, that kind of overperformance in rural areas is all Democrats need to win statewide. They don’t have to beat Republicans in rural places; losing by less is all it takes.
While there were many factors contributing to this outcome, the narrower margins in these GOP strongholds point to a strong case for Democrats to make to rural voters. Democratic candidates hoping to perform well in rural areas often receive the same advice: Show up, be respectful and demonstrate that you understand rural folks’ lives. Those are all fine starting points, but they’re not enough by themselves.
The scope of the damage is breathtaking.
It has long been clear that Republicans seldom bother to repay the overwhelming support they receive in rural America with any tangible effort to improve the lives of the people who live there. But the second Trump administration has quickly turned the usual GOP indifference into something much more malign: a genuine assault on rural Americans.
Much of that attack stems from the administration’s attempt to undo everything the Biden administration did, which includes many programs Biden created or expanded to help rural America. Trump and Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency are gutting the Agriculture Department agency that promotes rural development. The administration dismantled USAID, which bought billions of dollars in American crops to distribute overseas. Farmers with signed contracts with the federal government to add solar and conservation projects to their farms, many of whom fronted the money, were left holding the bag when the funds were frozen. Now the administration has written to them saying they might get their money sooner if they eliminate “harmful DEIA” from their proposals. “When I got that,” one farmer told The Washington Post, “I forwarded it to my USDA rep and said, ‘What in the world does this mean?’” As part of the 2021 infrastructure bill, $42.5 billion was allotted to extend broadband to every home in America, a vital need for underserved rural areas. The process was slow, but plans are now in place to start installing high-speed fiber connections — except the Trump administration has held up the money. The Commerce Department plans to shift much of the funding from fiber to less reliable satellite connections that will cost consumers more, all so Musk’s Starlink can reap billions in public funds. The scope of the damage is breathtaking. Rural universities are being hit with devastating budget cuts. Rural K-12 schools are losing funding for teachers. Trump and Musk have even targeted the agency that helps fund rural libraries. And now farmers are waiting to see whether they’ll be crushed by Trump’s tariffs and the inevitable responses from other countries, some of which will cut off their purchases of American agricultural products. It could be a version of the retaliatory agricultural tariffs from Trump’s first term, only worse. This relentless onslaught gives Democrats an opening to make an obvious argument to rural voters: If you don’t want the world’s richest man to rip the heart out of your community, when Election Day comes, you can say no. Wisconsin just did, and others may follow.
Paul Waldman is a journalist and author focused on politics and culture. 
