In this final stretch of the US midterm elections, Democrats and independents could win back communities and towns across America’s rural heartlands through a combination of resurgent “prairie populism”, local despair over the impact of Donald Trump’s agenda and an old-fashioned tenet of shoe-leather politics: showing up everywhere.

When Dan Osborn rolled into one of the most rural counties in Nebraska earlier this month, he started walking into businesses in the tiny main drag of Arthur, ready to meet whomever he could in the town of about 100.

For an independent making a run for the US Senate in a red state, every vote matters – even the ones in solidly Republican areas that political candidates often overlook. Osborn is touring all 93 counties in the state before election day; he has about a dozen left.

He’s one of several high-profile candidates seeking to win over areas the left and center ceded to Republicans in the last decade-plus. They’re running on populist messages rooted in the agrarian culture of their states, harkening back to politicians who stood up to corporate interests in previous generations by tying together farmers and workers who felt abandoned by both political parties.

In Iowa, the Democratic US Senate candidate, Josh Turek, calls himself a “commonsense prairie populist”. Sam Forstag, a Democrat running for Congress in Montana, has emphasized economic populism in his campaign to flip a red district, saying he wants to fight for “people like the kid I was growing up, whose belly is full because of food stamps”.

One writer referred to the politics of Kansas pastor Adam Hamilton, a Democrat, as a “populism of decency”, comparing Hamilton to William Jennings Bryan, a late-1900s evangelical populist from neighboring Nebraska who was known as the “great commoner”.

“For me, populism is not doing things through a political lens, through party lens, but your political north star always being, what is best for the people?” Turek said. “So for me, it’s what is best for Iowa. What’s best for Iowans, particularly what’s best for the middle class? What’s best for the workers? What’s best for rural communities? What’s best for small family farms?”

The candidates often push back on attempts to label their politics, and instead emphasize their pragmatism and willingness to work with politicians of any political background. Hamilton’s campaign, for instance, said he looked up to Bob Dole, the late longtime Republican US senator from Kansas, and said Hamilton would work with anyone.

“It’s how Kansas got the Farm Bill that has supported farmers and low-income kids for decades – by working together, Democrats and Republicans, to deliver for our state,” Hamilton’s campaign said.

This election cycle adds in datacenters and artificial intelligence to the populist platform, drawing on anti-corporate and anti-elite sentiments and a desire in rural areas to maintain their land, and their lifestyles, away from big tech interference.

“I’ve never seen our party so quickly adapt to where the voters were on an issue, and really leaning into where the voters were, versus poll-testing it to death,” said Jane Kleeb, the chair of the Nebraska Democratic party. “I think that’s been a lesson now for candidates to say it’s OK to talk about these local issues that people are talking about.”

A combination of despair and competition

In the late half of the 19th century, the left-of-center populist movement in the US focused on small farmers. The chief enemy was the railroads, said Cory Haala, a history professor at South Dakota State University who wrote a book on midwestern progressive populism.

Railroads bought up land and charged exorbitant rates to farmers who needed to ship their goods to other parts of the country. These farmers, often working together with organized labor, pushed to regulate railroads and stand against out-of-state interests, he said.

Some of the hallmarks of the movement persist today: a state-run bank in North Dakota, as well as a state-run flour mill; political parties such as the Democratic-Farmer-Labor alliance in Minnesota. Throughout the 20th century, progressive populism ebbed and flowed, with another peak in the 1980s in response to the farm crisis, when poor economic conditions led to massive small farm failures.

Populists and farming-focused Democrats won for decades throughout the prairie and midwestern states, from Tom Harkin in Iowa and Byron Dorgan in North Dakota to Tom Daschle in South Dakota and Bob Kerry in Nebraska. By 2013, though, USA Today called them a “fading species”.

“The conversations that we’re seeing around anti-monopoly, around antitrust and around datacenters are providing new flashpoints for the kind of populist organizing that was successful in the 1980s, in the 1930s and earlier than that,” Haala said. “It is an oftentimes out-of-state, kind of faceless corporate endeavor.”

Heidi Heitkamp, a former US senator who was the last Democrat to win statewide in North Dakota, noted that her win wasn’t that long ago – she won in 2012, then lost her re-election in 2018. Her successor, Republican Kevin Cramer, recently told Out of State, a rural policy newsletter, that he was glad he wasn’t on the ballot this year.

Heitkamp told the Guardian that the Democratic party decided it was easier to grow its base in the suburbs than to maintain any kind of presence in rural America. Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader in the US Senate, said as much in 2016: “For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two, three moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia.”

Now, candidates rooted to their states, speaking to the economic trouble their neighbors are facing with high gas prices, tariffs, rural hospital healthcare woes and datacenters, are trying again to win over these voters. Democrats and independent populists need to respond directly to these concerns to build back their reputations and ultimately expand their representation, Heitkamp said.

“Rural areas are heavily dependent on being able to get in the car and afford to drive,” she said. “And where people once upon a time believed that this administration would solve those challenges, they’ve lost faith.”

Hitting the road

In Arthur, Osborn first talked to a handful of locals at the town’s market, then went next door to the Bunkhouse – a restaurant with walls lined with antlers, animal skins and Nebraska license plates.

He grabbed a burger with a couple of supporters who heard he’d be in town, then talked to other tables, first apologizing for the frequency of political ads, and then explaining who he was. “I’m not a Republican, I’m not a Democrat, I just wanna work for workers,” he said.

Wins – or even narrow losses – in these areas would signal to national Democrats and independents where to invest in 2028, and how to run campaigns that can win over skeptical voters in rural states.

If Osborn loses, “then it’s just business as usual”, he said. “And then it’s just an R winning because they’re an R. And they don’t come to Arthur, because they don’t need to. And I don’t want to think about that future.”

Kristy Ferguson, who lives in Arthur, wasn’t sure if she would vote before she left town to winter in Florida, but a friend from Florida texted her and said she needed to vote for Osborn before taking off. She voted that morning, heard Osborn was in town and went to find him. She knew of three left-leaning people in town, and called them to come meet him, too.

“I didn’t really know there was a chance” he could win, Ferguson, a 72-year-old independent, said. “I hope he can be in the Senate, so that’s a valuable vote.”

Ray, a 75-year-old Democrat from Arthur who met with Osborn at the Bunkhouse, said he liked the fact that Osborn wasn’t rich, that he was a Nebraska local and that he wanted to help people. He could remember when gas prices were 30 cents a gallon, he said; now they were “ridiculous”.

“I want somebody that ain’t in there for themselves, you know?” he said.

Does he think Osborn can win? “I hope he does, but who knows,” he said. “If people get fed up enough with these other clowns that are running.”

Osborn, a former union leader, brings together workers and farmers in his politics, like the prairie populists did to stand up to corporate interests. He’s running on an anti-corruption, anti-two party system, pro-working class platform. “When we talk about prairie populism, that’s the counter to populism – just enriching your buddies,” he told the voters.

He next went to Hyannis, a slightly bigger town about 30 minutes away through rolling hills and whipping wind, for another small meeting, this time in a bank conference room with skeptical questions from the few people who showed up. They asked him about his stance on abortion, social programs, immigration and Islam. On abortion: “I’m 100% pro-life in my own personal life. I would never advocate for that. But I’m also pro-choice.” On social programs, he wants to protect social security and keep it solvent. He supports reforming immigration policies and says Nebraska needs immigrants to fill jobs. And on Islam: “I think everybody has the freedom to worship however they want.”

Osborn stressed that he wasn’t a Democrat – despite the ads running against him claiming he was, courtesy of his opponent, the Republican senator Pete Ricketts.

Mark Vinton, a 46-year-old rancher from the area who is also the chair of the county’s Republican party, said he was looking for whichever candidate would align most with Trump. He heard Osborn would be in town, and initially thought it was a marketing ploy for Osborn to visit all 93 counties in the state. But he gave credit: Osborn took his questions “respectfully” and seemed like a “reasonable guy”.

Vinton would not be voting for Osborn. His mind could have been changed, he said, but it wasn’t. It was safe to say the two men had philosophical and political differences. “I’m going to support whoever supports the president’s policies,” he added.

Will it work?

There needs to be a “permission structure” in heavily Republican communities for them to vote for an independent, according to Osborn: voters need to be willing to put aside their political identity. It’s a big ask, he said, and that’s why he tries to reach them in person as often as he can, routinely doing five or six town halls each day, across the state.

“It could come down to hundreds of votes in Nebraska, so talking to every single person matters,” he said.

Turek, the “commonsense prairie populist” candidate in Iowa, emphasizes that he will go anywhere, and that sometimes-uncomfortable conversations with people who disagree are critical to building trust. He represents the reddest district that Democrats won in the Iowa legislature, places where Trump wins by double digits.

He’s committed to visiting each of Iowa’s 99 counties annually if he wins, he said. As he has campaigned throughout the state, he’s found that Iowans embrace prairie populist issues: livable wages, affordable housing and healthcare, drinkable water, addressing corruption, overturning the supreme court ruling that led to unfettered money in politics, functioning infrastructure and strong public schools.

Turek runs into people who voted for Trump two or three times – card-carrying Republicans – in rural communities disproportionately affected by healthcare cuts and “bad federal policy”. This is not the state they grew up in, and they’re hurting, they tell him.

“I can’t speak for the party as a whole,” Turek said, “but for myself, it’s going to be really clear who I’m up there fighting for.”

Kleeb, the Democratic chair in Nebraska, said Democrats are in a phase of rebuilding their state parties, and Democratic and independent candidates need to show voters they’re going to stick around beyond one election cycle.

If these populists can win, it will “supercharge” political investment in these areas, he said. “We can prove, see, you picked up issues that people were talking about, you didn’t poll-test to death, you weren’t in an ivory tower, and you actually went on the ground and spoke to rural voters, and look at what happens: you win.”