This time, rural voters ‘just weren’t there’ for the GOP
By David Montgomery, Stateline
November 13, 2026
LAMPASAS, Texas — Standing at the edge of his family’s 300-acre cattle ranch in Central Texas, Clayton Tucker is characteristically attired in a white Stetson western hat, a beige shirt with pearl snaps, and lightly faded Wrangler jeans.
At 35, Tucker is poised to become the first Democrat in more than three decades to serve as Texas agriculture commissioner, a post from which he will oversee policies affecting much of rural Texas. The last Democrat to serve as agriculture commissioner left office in January of 1991— a month before Tucker was born.
Tucker, who takes office in January, benefitted from the Democratic wave that swept across Texas and other states in the midterm elections, propelled by widespread disenchantment with Republican policies, both in the cities and on the farm.
Across the country, rural voters — staunchly Republican in recent decades — either defected to Democrats or stayed home to protest the spread of data centers, rising fuel prices, the war in Iran and other grievances.
In Texas, about 90% of the counties where turnout decreased were rural, according to The Texas Tribune. While many rural voters stayed faithful to GOP candidates, their diminished numbers at the polls helped clear the way for Democratic victories: In the state’s U.S. Senate race, the Democrats improved their performance in all 254 Texas counties, compared with the 2024 U.S. Senate contest.
“People felt like they were being treated as sacrificial lambs for Wall Street, for Silicon Valley, for all these tech bros and oligarchs and everyone else,” Tucker said in an interview behind the steering wheel of his parked 1982 GMC pickup truck, “and they just weren’t being supported by our government anymore.”
Rural disenchantment also helped drive epic Democratic victories in other states.
In Kansas, Methodist minister Adam Hamilton was elected to the U.S. Senate, the first Kansas Democrat to win a Senate seat since 1932. Analysts attributed Hamilton’s victory to a rural backlash over high fuel and fertilizer prices and cheap imported beef. In Montana, former smoke-jumper Sam Forstag flipped one of the state’s two congressional seats, becoming the first Montana Democrat to win a U.S. House seat since 1994.
Partisan control also shifted in Iowa, where agriculture-related jobs employ roughly 1 in 5 residents. Iowa Democrats won the governor’s race, a U.S. Senate seat and three of the state’s four congressional seats. Republicans maintained their grip on both chambers of the state legislature, but Democrats narrowed the gap.
Iowa Republican U.S. Rep. Ashley Hinson won just over half of rural and small-town voters in her unsuccessful bid for one of Iowa’s U.S. Senate seats, according to The Associated Press. But that was a smaller percentage of rural and small-town voters than the GOP got in 2022, and the diminished margin helped secure a victory for Democratic candidate Josh Turek.
“It was a setback for Republicans and now they have to figure out how they’re going to get back some of the voters they probably lost,” said Abhishek Chatterjee, an associate professor of political science at the University of Montana.
Texas the epicenter
Texas, the nation’s second-largest state, was an epicenter of the midterm upheaval. Voters there turned against three-term Republican Gov. Greg Abbott to choose state Rep. Gina Hinojosa as the state’s first Latina governor and the first Democrat to hold the office since Ann Richards left in 1995.
Texas voters also elected Democratic state Rep. James Talarico to the U.S. Senate and placed Democrats, including Tucker, in all of the top statewide offices. Democrats also took over the Texas House, which has been controlled by Republicans since 2003.
Republicans still hold the majority in the Texas Senate and are considering rule changes to undercut the power of incoming presiding officer Vikki Goodwin, a Democratic legislator who defeated incumbent Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick for the state’s number two post, which includes leadership of the legislature’s upper chamber.
Young, diverse voters showed up for midterms as older, Trump voters stayed home
In the aftermath of what she called a “nationwide Republican defeat,” Texas Republican Party Chair D’rinda Randall announced the formation of an invitation-only Texas Mandate Committee composed of statewide leaders charged with “examining what occurred and developing a strategy to win Texas back.”
“This is not about placing blame,” she said in a statement. “It is about planning to win.”
Kendall Scudder, chair of the Texas Democratic Party as well as the Democratic National Committee’s Rural Council, told Stateline that his party’s Texas triumph resulted in part from a concentrated campaign that included a heavy focus on rural Texas.
“What I think happened was folks in rural Texas gave Democrats an opportunity to state our case, and we hadn’t had that in while,” said Scudder, who grew up in Sulphur Springs in largely rural East Texas.
“I think we started making inroads, and part of that could be because Republicans weren’t worth showing up and voting for. But I think another piece is that Democrats were talking about things that were important to rural Texas.”
Top issues that resonated strongly in rural Texas, he said, included the spread of data centers, “mass surveillance” by mounted Flock cameras that read license plates, and inadequate funding for state schools. As result, he said, 21 largely rural counties that voted red in previous elections “went blue this time.”
“I think we moved the needle in a good way, and I think if Democrats deliver for those communities, we can start to unlock more and more gains,” he said.
Outgoing Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller, a Republican who lost his primary race for re-election, echoed Tucker and Scudder’s assertions that rural voters are up in arms over data centers, artificial intelligence, Flock cameras, and soaring fuel prices. Tucker says he will push for a moratorium on data centers after he takes office in January.
“We’ve never had any real property tax relief,” Miller said in a phone interview “Diesel’s the highest it’s ever been. Fertilizer’s the highest it’s ever been. I don’t think the Democrats took anything away from the Republicans,” Miller said, “we basically gave it to them.”
Miller put much of the blame for rural dissension on Abbott’s policies. Abbott endorsed Miller’s Republican primary opponent, Nate Sheets, who in turn was beaten by Tucker in the general election.
A $1 billion publicly funded private school voucher program that Abbott pushed through the Texas Legislature in 2025 also stirred dissent in parts of rural Texas, amid fears that it will siphon money from public schools.
“There was a lot of hard feelings about the voucher program out there,” said Snapper Carr of Austin, a managing partner and general counsel of Focused Advocacy, a lobbying firm that represents cities and communities throughout the state. The Republican downturn, he said, was particularly evident in what he said are typically “bright red areas of West Texas,” where residents “talk about the price of diesel like we all talk about the weather.”
“The Republicans still carried them,” he said, “but their margins were much less than what they’ve been in the past…There was a large number of past Republicans that didn’t show up this time.”
‘Totally surprised’
In Briggs, an unincorporated Central Texas community with around 100 residents, Ray Bizzell, 83, offered his thoughts on the election outcome as he left Sunday’s services at the Briggs Baptist Church. Bizzell, who runs a floor covering business about 20 miles away in Georgetown, Texas, said he voted “Republican, straight ticket” and “was totally surprised” by Democrats’ strong showing in the state.
“I really thought we might hold it,” he said. “I just think my beliefs align better with the Republican Party.”
In Williamson County, which stretches from the high-growth Austin suburbs to patches of rural Texas further east, the unexpected Democratic surge propelled first-time candidate Chris Jimenez, 42, into a state legislative victory over a Republican incumbent backed the governor.
In this year’s U.S. Senate race, Williamson County swung nearly 19 points toward the Democrats compared with the Senate race in 2024, according to The Associated Press.
Jimenez, who lives on a pecan farm with his wife and 16-year-old daughter near the town of Elgin, is headed to the statehouse after defeating Republican state Rep. Caroline Harris Davila for the House seat once held by Talarico. Jimenez’s opponent was endorsed by Abbott.
Jimenez grew up on a ranch near Sanderson and served in the Marine Corps. He said his thoughts of running for office intensified after he was “pulled over and profiled by a police officer,” he told Stateline. “I was very concerned on multiple levels. I figured, ‘Hey, if this is happening to me, a Marine Corps veteran just trying to make my life here on the farm, it’s got to be happening to multiple people.’”
“Did I expect to win? I felt our message resonated with people, regardless of their political affiliation,” he said. “It was never about being red or blue. It was about survival in Texas and it’s gotten hard for a lot of folks.”
Democrats romped in state elections. What will they do with their newfound power?
Jimenez has joined other incoming lawmakers in pre-filing bills before the January start of the legislature. His measure call for repealing “the private school voucher scheme,” eliminating a sales tax exemption for data centers and expanding Medicaid benefits in Texas.
Republican data analyst Derek Ryan said Republicans needed to win by “a very large margin” in rural counties to counter strong turnout in predominately Democratic urban areas. The GOP only had 32-point advantage in those counties in this year’s mid-term elections, he said, compared to 55 points in 2022 and 46 points in 2018.
Ryan estimated that about 625,000 Republicans sat out the election, according to the Texas Rural Report.
“We knew there was going to be a slight shift towards the Democrats in rural Texas,” Ryan told Stateline. “I didn’t think it was going to be this significant, but it comes down to the economy and gas prices.
“When you live in rural Texas, it’s a long drive anywhere you go. So when it’s costing you more to fill up your tank, you know you’re going to vote with that in mind.”
Suzanne Bellsnyder, who owns and runs a newspaper in the small town of Spearman near the Oklahoma state line, said she has analyzed all 184 Texas counties with a population under 50,000 and found signs of Republican slippage in areas that have typically served as Republican bulwarks.
“Republicans have always depended on the rural counties to kind of be their firewall, their insurance policy,” she said. But this time, she added, “they just weren’t there.”
Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org.