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We Can’t Afford to Lose in 2024 We must address the rural urban divide
I’m concerned about the 2024 election. Democrats already do a good job campaigning for the popular vote. Republicans do a good job campaigning for the Electoral College vote. I am here to provide a view into the thinking of the rural voter and to help us win the Electoral College vote. I do not mean to challenge Democratic priorities or messages. I focus on the need to constantly pivot from urban to rural. This is particularly important in the 8 upper Midwestern states (of which 6 are solidly swing states) that have both a large urban and a large rural population, and which are my focus. These states are Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, western Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. I refer to those states as the Electoral College Homesteaded States. I was raised on a family farm in the middle of those states.
Unfortunately the rural voter has become the largest under-represented minority group in Politics, even though it represents up to a third of the Electoral College vote that matters. The following chart represents the under-represented groups in the 8 Electoral College Homesteaded States, weighted by the number of votes from each of the 8 states:
Mark W. Yonkman on The Race



It isn’t always a matter of saying different things, it is often a matter of saying the same thing differently.
President Obama did this beautifully. He also had the advantage of naturally being able to speak to rural voters and black urban voters at the same time – in many respects the voice used to speak to both rural and black voters is the same. I know because I have lived in a mixed household for the last 27 years.
President Obama won all 8 Electoral College Homesteaded States the first time he ran. And as we know, if you win all 8 states, you win the election.
Candidate Hillary Clinton ran an excellent campaign to win the popular vote. And she did win it. It also was clear to me that Hillary would lose all 6 Midwestern Electoral College swing states because she was not running a campaign to win the Electoral College vote. And she did lose all 6 swing states. Not because of any particular policy or agenda item. She simply never spoke to the rural voter, did not have any staff focused on the family farm or rural issues, and brought up the wrong issues at the wrong times with the wrong people. She spoke to me consistently on issues I cared about as a gay parent of two black daughters. But she already had my vote. I constantly thought “Why is she bringing these things up with my rural neighbors?” Even on issues that garner some sympathy, rural voters kept wondering “Sure, but what about me?”
There is no reason Democrats can’t win all 8 Midwestern Homesteaded States. President Obama did. It is not just about policy. We all know that policy will never win an election on its own – a candidate also has to demonstrate that he or she is on Team Rural and Team Farm to win the Electoral College vote. It is simply a matter of speaking to the rural voter, not just the urban voter, and on issues in which the rural voter is interested. The Youth, Black, LGBTQ, and Arab American vote will no longer make up for the loss of the rural vote.
My goal is to help in this endeavor.