Some Black Rural Voters Feel Abandoned by Democrats

The election results didn’t shock Keith McCants, a 42-year-old welder in south Georgia.

Leading up to Election Day, the chairman of the local Democratic Party had been door-knocking and engaging with voters across Bryan County, about 21 miles from Savannah. He even passed out Kamala Harris for President signs, but people “would take them down and steal them and things like that,” he said.

In the Republican-leaning county, where Black people are 13% of the roughly 45,000 population and Donald Trump won in 2016 and 2020, McCants kept hearing the same concerns from Black voters on the fence.

“They [Democrats] can say, ‘Oh, the economy’s been doing better.’ Yeah, on TV, but on the ground, we don’t feel it,” McCants said. “Trump, through all his fluff, he had signs down here in Richmond Hill: ‘Kamala high prices, Trump low prices.‘ It was a simple slogan, and it resonated.”

The long-standing frustration within and outside the Democratic Party stems from its failure to engage effectively with working-class and low-income Black voters in rural areas. Political experts and Democratic leaders say the party has faced deep divisions for years, driven by neglect of these voters, limited civic engagement, constant criticism, and increased voter suppression, including state-level laws enacted this year. While it’s still too early to analyze how Black rural voters cast their ballots, experts and leaders on-the-ground told Capital B these concerns have resulted in some level of loss of trust among rural communities.

McCants’ efforts, this time around, didn’t bear fruit. Unlike other states, voter turnout in Bryan County (and statewide) was high in 2024. Despite voter turnout being at 75% in the county, a 5% increase from 2020, Black voters cast 37 fewer votes than in 2020, according to Georgia Votes.

While canvassing, McCants heard: “Trump was more believable.” “Harris was indecisive on camera.” “Food prices are too high.”

McCants noted that many voters are tired of the party’s attempts to “court them” during election season, yet see no meaningful improvements in their daily lives. Despite Trump’s rhetoric that many view as racist and sexist, they argue he offered a more compelling message to certain voters.

“The Democratic Party has lost its way,” McCants added.

Capital B spoke to several Democratic leaders and political experts to explain this shift.

A disconnect when it comes to messaging

In recent conversations, Dwan Walker, mayor of Aliquippa, Pennsylvania, said people didn’t trust Harris’ economic plan or immigration policies, and consumed a lot of misinformation on social media by the Trump campaign, which he believed led to some disengagement. Some fed into the narrative that Harris didn’t care about them.

“He knew how to play it. Most people, who don’t investigate the why, will always fall into what’s being promoted,” he said. “That’s just the way it is.”

Many residents in rural areas — where people are struggling to make ends meet — expected her to show up more, Walker said. “If you keep yourself distanced, the decision is easy. I can’t approve of what I don’t touch. I can’t vote for who I don’t see,” he added.

In rural North Carolina, Enfield Mayor W. Mondale Robinson says the Democratic Party didn’t have trusted messengers, and instead used a consultant class, which included Black celebrities and influencers, who are disconnected and not in community with rural voters.

“We see either people are sitting out of elections or people are rejecting our ideas completely in elections,” Robinson told Capital B. “When are we going to get critical of the tactics and not show up outside of presidential elections to show that you are committed to addressing what’s plaguing them?”

The Democratic Party hasn’t clearly articulated how their policies or laws have tangible benefits on Black communities, especially in rural areas that struggle with hospital closures, limited jobs, and crumbling infrastructure, said Emmitt Riley III, president of the National Conference of Black Political Scientists. Democrats don’t do enough to explain the difficulty of being a Democratic leader in a red state, he added, which can add to lack of government trust.

“What you don’t see Democrats doing is at least connecting the current conditions of rural America to Republican-controlled legislatures and Republican statewide governors,” Riley said. “All these towns look just alike, and we have Black leadership, but they’re crippled by a Republican-controlled legislature that has desecrated our health care infrastructure, our roads, our streets, our bridges.”

Despite the message, Riley contends that with a Black woman at the top of the ticket, it doesn’t matter what the economic message is or not — white voters are going to respond to the race of that candidate. He referenced Mark Robinson, the Republican candidate for governor in North Carolina. Voters there chose Trump for president, but didn’t pick Robinson, even though he is conservative and the “equivalent of Donald Trump,” Riley added.

“White people’s rejection of a changing country”

Keith McCants, chairman of the Democratic Party in Bryan County, Georgia, speaks to a crowd during a local fundraiser in April. (Courtesy of Keith McCants)

Several people, including McCants, say much of the election discourse around the Democratic Party disproportionately centered on criticizing Black voters, despite the fact that they overwhelmingly supported Vice President Harris, with 80% of their vote. This may have overshadowed the impact of sexism, misogyny, misinformation and racism on voting patterns, with shifts among younger voters, Latino men, and white voters who have remained a loyal voting bloc to the Republican Party.

With only about 100 days to officially run a campaign, Harris’ lagged behind President Joe Biden’s turnout in 2020. The vote count isn’t complete, but an analysis by the New York Times found she had 1.9 million fewer votes in large Democratic counties, whereas Trump received an additional 1.2 million votes in Republican-majority counties.

“We’re still going through the data, but I think that this election essentially came down to … white people’s rejection of a changing country,” Riley said. “You had more than 76 million voters to vote for Donald Trump, despite him engaging in one of the most racist and sexist campaigns that we’ve had.”

Harris underperformed with rural voters, too, particularly in southern Virginia, eastern North Carolina and south Georgia, Politico reports. She received 35% of the rural vote in comparison to Trump who received 63%. Despite this, he generally made slight inroads with Black voters, garnering 16% of Black voters, an 8% increase from 2020.

Millions more sat the election out.

In Bryan County, where McCants lives, Republicans won across the board — from congressional races to school board seats. Other major demographics — white, Asian and Hispanic — nearly doubled their impact, turning out more voters. Each of those groups sent more voters to the polls than Bryan’s Black community. And with a Black candidate at the top of the presidential ticket for only the second time in history, it was not unreasonable for Democrats to be hopeful that the turnout would have been bigger this election cycle.

A wave of voter suppression and intimidation

Riley went on to say that one of the overlooked factors in the post-election conversations is how states passed voter suppression laws this year, the second most active year for restrictive voting laws in at least a decade. From limiting mail-in and absentee voting, many states restricted access to voting and disenfranchised voters, which Riley says may have been a reason why Harris underperformed.

In Georgia, a law took effect in July that would make it easier for people to be kicked off the voter rolls. As a result, the Republican Party challenged the votes of 63,000 voters in Georgia. Despite the efforts, less than 1% of people were removed from the rolls or placed into challenged status, according to an analysis by the Associated Press. On Election Day, more than two dozen precincts were targeted with fake bomb threats in the state.

Riley also pointed to Virginia, where the U.S. Department of Justice sued to stop the state, its Board of Elections, and its Commissioner of Elections from removing voters off the rolls. In Pennsylvania, the Republican Party secured a win this week when the state Supreme Court ordered every county’s election officials not to count certain mail-in ballots for this year’s general election that arrived on time but didn’t have correct dates handwritten by voters.

Organizers and leaders have called out the lack of infrastructure and resources in rural areas to fight back against these efforts.

Dara Gaines, rural researcher and visiting assistant professor at the University of Arkansas, told Capital B in August that national and statewide candidates must ensure voter protection in lieu of these laws. If a person has experienced, or seen, political violence where they live, they may be less likely to step out and vote or speak up.

“If we’re serious about supporting and protecting rural Black voters, we have to make sure that they will be protected and supported all the way up from registration to the time they cast their vote,” she said.

Moving forward, the Democratic Party must build relationships and empower Black strategists and organizers on how to get the rural Black community to turn out. They also have to increase turnout among white people — Black voters are not enough to turn the tide. “Coming off an election like this, it’s time to have a different voice at the wheel,” McCants said.

“If you don’t invest in on-the-ground operations, you can’t carry any state — let alone Georgia, which is still a largely agricultural state, a conservative state. With my Black voters, the trust has been broken.”

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