The Financial Pressures Weighing On Young Rural Voters

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This is Elizabeth.

And I'm John.

From Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and we're on a hot dog eating trip ending in Cherokee County, South Carolina.

This was recorded at 1.45 p.m.

Eastern Time on Thursday, October 16th, 2025.

Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but John, our hot dog connoisseur, will have completed his goal of eating a hot dog in all 46 South Carolina counties.

Oh my god.

If you're hearing this today, charge a hot dog.

Here's the show.

Wow.

Yeah.

I don't know that we can advise that as a health.

Yeah, yeah, there's a lot of stuff.

But, you know, I like a good hot dog now and then.

It's like the only time that I actually eat sauerkraut.

So otherwise I wouldn't eat it.

So that is a good opportunity.

I have done a barbecue tour in South Carolina and eastern North Carolina as well as Texas.

That's a fun thing to do.

Eat your fiber as well, guys.

Okay.

Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast.

I'm Ashley Lopez.

I cover politics.

I'm Elena Moore.

I also cover politics.

And I'm Domenico Montanero, senior political editor and correspondent.

And today on the show, we're talking about Gen Z and millennial voters.

They're expected to make up more than half of the eligible voters by the next presidential election.

And this is a voting bloc who says financial pressures are key to how or whether they vote.

Elena, you've been talking to people in their 20s and 30s who live in small towns and rural areas recently.

Can you give me a sense of what you've heard from these voters?

Yeah, and I mean, we should say, you know, the economy is the top issue for most Americans, regardless of age, background, it's across the board.

Talking to young voters in some small towns and rural areas, it seems like their dreams of success they aren't lavish dreams.

They're often the traditional milestones of owning a home one day, starting a family, getting a good job.

Those are really at the center of a lot of people's aspirations right now, and they don't feel...

possible for a lot of people or they feel extremely fragile if they are achieved.

On top of that, I think a lot of people say they're looking for opportunities but feel passed over.

Like the focus from elected officials is not on their communities, but rather maybe large metropolitan areas.

One young woman I spoke with, Julie Hill, she's 22 and lives in a rural area of northwest Pennsylvania.

She's unemployed and dealing with mental health challenges after losing family in recent years.

So she's supporting herself.

She told me her dream is really to own a home where she can raise animals.

Like that's her dream.

And she wants to have a horse because she had a horse when she was a kid and had to give it up because of financial reasons.

And, you know, that dream does not feel super possible right now.

Here's what she told me.

The story of Sisyphus and the rock-that's kind of what it feels like.

You're just pushing that rock up every day just to have it roll back down.

Julie Hill voted in the last presidential election.

She voted for former vice president Kamala Harris, but she calls herself an independent

because she, you know, doesn't really want to be labeled with one of these parties, which is something we hear from young people a lot.

Yeah.

And Domenico, can you give us a sense of how different financial pressures are now for this generation than previous generations?

Because my sense is that this is not just vibes-based.

This is rooted in a financial reality.

Yeah, and I think that there's a lot of people who will point to the fact that

Gen Z actually has higher income, even adjusted for inflation, than past generations.

But when you look at the buying power, it's far lower.

And when you think about things like education, healthcare, housing, all skyrocketed.

One stat that I thought was really interesting that I saw laid out.

Since the 1960s, inflation has gone up 10 times, right?

Sounds like a lot.

Housing prices have gone up 24 times.

Also, you can just see it in the age of the first-time homebuyer of today.

It was one of the reasons I really wanted to dive into this story.

According to the National Association of Realtors, the median age of a first-time homebuyer was 28 years old in 1991.

And last year it was 38.

Getting older as far as your financial comfort, right?

And I think that there's a lot of things reflected in that too.

Having children, people living with their parents longer, for example.

Student loans are obviously a big weight around a lot of people's financial capabilities.

So yeah, there's a lot of things that are weighing clearly on this generation when it comes to finances.

And they're believing less in politics as a way to be able to fix some of these ills.

Yeah, it's like all these milestones of adulthood are getting pushed further and further down.

And I do wonder, though, if there's a rural and urban divide here, because yes, housing prices are astronomical, especially when you look at the cities, but there are fewer economic opportunities in rural areas.

Like what do you see, Elena, as like the big difference between the young voters you're talking to in big cities versus like rural America?

Recently we put out this call out on our website that asked young people to respond to some questions essentially that were, can you have a better life than your parents?

What do you see success as?

In just a few days, we got over 1,100 responses.

And so that's where I've been pulling some of my interviews from.

And I'll say I've gotten responses from people in small towns and rural areas and big cities.

It's just a really strong reminder that this is an experience, in some ways a collective one, but it's manifesting in different ways.

When I've talked to some folks in these smaller communities, it's really centered on they just can't keep up with these rising prices.

And it's affecting the basic necessities that they need to keep their family going.

And to really hone in on that rural small town experience, another person I talked to who wasn't part of the form submission was this young man named Andrew Tate.

He is 36, has two daughters.

They live in Shenandoah Valley, Virginia.

He says he gets up before the sun rises and often works until it sets.

He works at a fruit factory and tends to their small family farm.

And despite all of that, he still says that their family barely gets by.

I think it's really fascinating that the the better part of this century has so far been focused on this idea of hope, on populism, left-wing or right-wing.

Obviously, former President Obama ran on this idea of hope, and it seemed kind of like, oh, you know, hope is this vague notion.

But he would often say that if people don't have hope in a community, that they don't feel like they can rise up through the ranks, they can't rise up through the ladder financially, that they're going to feel less like politics works, that they're going to feel less engaged, and that the American dream seems more out of reach for people.

On the right-wing populist side, I mean, frankly, President Trump is somebody who really ran on this idea of the forgotten man and woman.

It wasn't just aimed at young people, but certainly you could argue in the 2024 election, that's something that he did more specifically, talking to those young folks about this populist idea of the other side leaving you behind.

And clearly, the economy was a huge piece of it, even if Trump himself says that the economy he doesn't think was really the driving force behind his movement.

He thinks that that was immigration and crime.

Yeah.

All right, we're going to take a quick break more in a moment.

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And we're back and we've been talking about the financial pressures on young rural voters, but I do want to dig in a little more on how these concerns are actually affecting people's politics.

Elena, what have you been hearing?

Yeah, I think there's a collective sense of feeling unseen and that leading to feeling disaffected or disengaged with politics.

I would say talking to young people of different backgrounds and different political affiliations, it really is the uniting issue is this sense of like affordability concern that many feel politicians don't understand.

And because they haven't, people would argue, lived through that feeling of being a young person and stressing about making your health care payment or not being able to afford a home.

And so I think it's led to a lot of hopelessness from people.

And that's kind of a sentiment that, you know, I mentioned him earlier.

Andrew Tate spoke with me about.

Like I said, he's a factory worker, a father of two young girls.

He wrote this really emotional and honest essay, at one point even saying that him and his partner can't afford to get married right now because he worries if they did, it could kick her and their children off of Medicaid.

And he doesn't want to put them on his jobs insurance because it's too expensive.

So like aspects of his life that should be the natural progression of getting older have had to be put on hold.

And so I asked him to explain where he stands in the current political landscape.

Here's what he said.

I'm really just tired of voting for who I hate least.

Like, I want someone to inspire me.

It doesn't matter if you're red or blue, whatever side of the aisle you're on.

Like, come on, guys, what do we want?

And he made a point not to share how he's voted in the past because he didn't want to be kind of immediately, as he would say, like categorized into a camp, which is kind of similar to what I've heard, you know, what we talked about earlier.

But he did say for him, the biggest priority is he wants politicians to focus on things like improving access to quality food, health care, education, getting back to that point of like, if you can help people survive, then they can prosper more.

Yeah, I mean, I think that you've seen young people, you know, 18 to 29 turn out at slightly higher rates than you've seen previously.

I think it was around 47 percent in the 2024 presidential election.

But a lot of polling will show that they are disengaged from politics, that they don't have a lot of trust in institutions.

There was an APNORC poll from this past August that found two in 10 adults under 30 followed politics either extremely or very closely.

Compared with those over 60, it was almost half, 45%.

And that's not atypical, but it does tell you about the sort of disengagement that's occurring.

And I think that these are really difficult problems to solve.

And when you have really difficult problems to solve, you see pendulum swings where the right-wing populism is up at one moment, but if people don't feel confident that that's working for them, then now you're starting to see in some cases on the left a left-wing populism rise.

Elena mentioned Zoran Mamdani, the New York Democratic mayoral candidate earlier.

And I think that there's going to be a real challenge for him if he does, in fact, win in New York, whether or not the kinds of things that he's pushed for in making housing more affordable in a place that has some of the most expensive housing in the country, if some of those policies can work and if there's a political movement behind him to be able to bridge some of the divides in New York to make that kind of thing possible in one small microcosm, but the largest city in the country.

I feel like it's both people are looking for ideas on helping them, solutions, but also effective outcomes.

I think a lot of people don't feel like anyone sees their struggle, but then they also don't have examples of success, of politicians actually delivering on what they say.

So it's kind of two parts.

And that's why you see a lot of people saying that they don't identify with either party, frankly.

Yeah.

well, this does make me wonder how the parties are approaching talking to these folks, considering these are their frustrations.

Like, what have you seen from either party when we're talking about like young rural voters in particular?

I think this is a huge sore spot for Democrats, and that's not new.

You know, it was a huge thread throughout the last few national elections, especially in 2024.

But I would say that, you know, to folks that study this voting block, there's a sense that Democrats have dropped the ball on engaging with these communities.

I talked to Nick Jacobs about this.

He's a professor at Colby College who studies rural voters.

And, you know, he said that this was something that Trump really amplified, this sense of grievance, and he recognized that.

And this idea of economic strain affecting rural towns and small towns around the country, that's not new.

That's a decades-long problem.

The difference, he says, is that there is a political disconnect and there's a lack of presence of Democrats in these areas, offering, you know, a second option.

I don't think many young people in rural areas listen to the president and hear us talk about tariffs and think that it's a silver bullet and it's going to solve all things.

But I think in a world where one side isn't offering anything but get a college degree and come work for big tech

and the other side is saying, well, no, well, we'll bring back the jobs that your dad had.

The answer is easy, which one of those you're going to choose.

You know, I think back to the 1968 campaign and Robert F.

Kennedy Sr.

then did an Appalachian tour.

And the Kennedys are one of the Camelot of American politics, blue bloods from Massachusetts.

Of course, Appalachia at that time was actually very Democratic, but there were issues of poverty and the rest that I think it helped open RFK's eyes to how to campaign and what kinds of programs to put forward.

I think about the sorting that's happened, though, in the country and how fewer Democrats live in rural areas.

And when you have that kind of hardening of politics, it makes it harder for Democrats to figure out ways to reach out.

And I remember during the 2024 campaign talking to Democratic Governor Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania, and one of the concerns that he had was whether or not the Democrats could reach out to some of those rural areas.

And he said it's really, really difficult because there's a lot of mistrust.

in those communities, but that you have to start with those conversations, getting into those places, learning what they need and what can be done in an authentic way to actually help.

Yeah, and I think Professor Jacobs at Colby kind of makes this clear is a lot of the economic strain that's affecting rural and small areas is not new.

This is decades long of feeling like young people have to leave these areas, their hometowns, in order to be successful.

But the difference is the political side.

And it also reminds me of the idea of moving out of your hometown.

You know, people talk about communities being hurt economically by that, but it's also still hard to move out of your hometown.

You know, one young woman I spoke with, Julie Hill, who we mentioned earlier, said that, yeah, a lot of people leave to get better opportunities, but that costs money and support.

And so even the idea of maybe leaving the place that isn't as economically prosperous is a hard thing to do.

There's actually a study from the Census Bureau and Harvard University that found nearly six in 10 young adults live within 10 miles of where they grew up, and eight in 10 live within a hundred miles.

You know, so much of the drift, you know, toward Republicans in rural areas has been cultural.

Really, that's what Republicans have appealed on, whether it's immigration or crime.

That's really what Republicans have focused in on.

It really hasn't been economics, hugely.

I mean, I think this was a big myth of the 2016 presidential campaign, that it was really about culture, not about economics.

And I think that that presents a challenge and an opportunity to both parties to be able to really address what people say is the core issue to what's shaping their lives.

Yeah, I mean, it sounds like there's an open lane at least for the Democratic Party specifically.

But I mean, overall, Elena, what do you think politicians or political parties need to do to win this group over?

Is it that simple?

Talk about the economy?

I think it's hard because now we know that the message has kind of been received to a lot of national Democrats.

In the wake of Trump's reelection victory, you hear all of these national leaders really hone in on the economy.

They registered that this was the top issue and that it drove especially a lot of young people in particular to vote for Trump.

And so, yeah, I feel like we'll see that emphasis.

I'm curious to see if there's going to be more of an acknowledgement that there is this dissatisfaction with voters.

Instead of just trying to, you know, put a band-aid on wounds, are they going to acknowledge the wounds first?

I guess we'll see.

Such a key in politics is authenticity.

And, you know, you can't just go in somewhere and say, I've got all these plans and I'm going to make your life better.

And you know what that comes across as?

Elitism, right?

And if there's been one thing that the Republican Party has been able to latch onto to be able to push away the Democratic Party in some of these rural areas is to say that the Democratic Party is the party of the elite.

And that anti-elitism has really helped Trump, for example, win and build his MAGA movement.

Democrats have really slid with blue-collar voters.

And I'm going to be really interested to see some of these candidates in the 2026 midterm elections who've really tried to strike a different tone to talk about affordability and look and feel like they are from the areas where we're talking about here.

All right, well, let's leave it there for today.

I'm Ashley Lopez, I cover politics.

I'm Elena Moore, I also cover politics.

And I'm Domenico Montanero, Senior Political Editor and Correspondent.

And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics podcast.

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