WHAT VOTERS ARE READING: DCCC’s Investments in Rural Voters and Voters of Color Make Waves

REMINDER: Already this year, the DCCC has launched our “Engagement On the Road” tour to meet directly with constituency voters in battleground districts, and has run multiple national paid media campaigns explicitly dedicated to reaching voters of color and rural voters, including the Committee’s first ad campaign of the midterm elections.

See some of the coverage highlighting the DCCC’s historic work below: 

• NPR: Democrats plan a new investment in winning rural voters, who’ve fled the party
  • Suzan DelBene, who chairs the DCCC and represents Washington’s 1st Congressional District, said Democrats see an opportunity to engage rural voters as President Trump’s economic agenda, particularly tariffs, becomes less popular.
  • She said rural voters see the “damage” being done by GOP policies that have led to “costs going up, health care being gutted,” and Democrats can provide an alternative.
  • “I think Republicans are turning their back,” DelBene told NPR. “They’ve been actively hurting rural communities with the policies they’ve put in place. Democrats are fighting to improve the lives of rural Americans and farmers.”
  • Democrats’ spending in rural communities is part of an “eight-figure investment,” according to a DCCC press release first shared with NPR. DelBene said the DCCC has a full-time staffer who will be focused on “strategic rural engagement across the country” for the midterms. She said the party has begun working with rural community groups and leaders in key competitive districts — including in newly redrawn districts in South Texas.
  • “When we look at the swing districts across the country, the districts that are going to determine the majority in the House of Representatives, we know that rural voters are key in those districts,” DelBene said.
• AP: DCCC launches outreach efforts for rural communities, voters of color
  • The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has rolled out an eight-figure investment plan targeting congressional districts with predominantly rural populations, as well as those with large Asian American, Black and Latino communities.
  • “We know that to win the House majority, House Democrats need to meaningfully engage with AANHPI, Black, Latino, and rural voters as early as possible,” Rep. Suzan DelBene, chair of the DCCC, said in a statement.
  • The “Our Power, Our Country” plan will include building up on-the-ground organizing and is expected to target districts in Colorado, Michigan, New York, Texas, and Virginia, among other states.
• Politico: Democrats spending big to expand coalition in midterms
  • The new program, called “Our Power, Our Country,” will focus on battleground House districts by hiring staffers to organize for Democratic candidates, buying ads and mobilizing voters.
  • Earlier this month, Democrats saw marked improvements in off-cycle elections among rural voters and Latinos, two groups that swung to the right in 2024. In Virginia, Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger made a targeted effort to court voters in the state’s deep-red rural counties, focusing on affordability and slamming President Donald Trump’s tariff policy. And in New Jersey, Gov.-elect Mikie Sherrill honed in on a cost-of-living message in the state’s predominantly Latino precincts.
  • Both strategies worked: Spanberger outperformed previous Democratic candidates among rural voters by a wide margin, and Sherrill erased Trump’s 2024 gains in Latino-plurality areas.
  • National Democrats see both races as proof of potential expansion opportunity, heading into a cycle that will determine control over Congress for Trump’s final two years in office. In a statement, DCCC national political director Brooke Butler said the new rural engagement program “sends a strong message that we’re leaving no voter behind and no stone unturned in our efforts to flip the House majority.”
• Daily Caller: As Grocery Prices Remain High, Democrats See Opening And Plan To Spend Eight Figures Wooing Certain Demographics
  • Fresh off a series of election victories, Democrats are focused on courting key demographics in the 2026 midterms.
  • The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) announced a “historic eight-figure investment” into outreach to non-white voters and rural voters Tuesday. The initiative, titled “Our Power, Our Country,” will “center its efforts on organizing, educating, engaging, and communicating to [Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AANHPI)], [b]lack, Latino, and rural communities in competitive battleground districts – both offensive and defensive – key to flipping the House majority,” according to the DCCC. Democrats are targeting all four demographics: Black, Latino, Asian, and rural. 
• Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire: Democrats Plan New Investment in Winning Rural Voters
  • “Democrats are announcing a new investment to win over voters in rural areas — where the party has suffered deep losses in recent elections — in their effort to win a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives next year,” NPR reports.
  • “This is the first time, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee says, that it’s had a program specifically dedicated to engaging rural voters.”
• Washington Examiner: Democrats look to reverse GOP gains with minority and rural voters in eight-figure buy
  • The DCCC’s eight-figure program will broaden the organization’s ability to conduct research, spend earlier with paid media and voter education, bolster mobilization and grassroots campaigns, and hire staff on the ground, according to a release.
  • The program’s release comes after two new polls from the Pew Research Center on Monday found that Hispanic adults are increasingly unhappy with the Trump administration over his economic and immigration policies, as the president continues to levy tariffs and increase deportations of immigrants across the country.
  • About two-thirds of Hispanic adults overall disapproved of the president’s approach to immigration, while 61% said his economic policies have made conditions worse, according to the poll.

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