Swinging back: economic and cultural populism in the Midwest

Just a couple of weeks before the 2026 midterm elections, Republicans are scrambling to defend Senate seats in states they have dominated over the past decade and more. Polls show Democratic candidates within striking distance – or leading – not only in Texas and Alaska, but also in Midwestern states such as Ohio, Iowa, and even Kansas. These were won by Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election by between 10 and 18 percentage points, revealing a potentially seismic move away from the Republican party. The question is whether we are witnessing merely a transitory reaction to a very unpopular president, or if a broader shift is underway, and if the Democrats will be able to make up ground in the cultural context of “Middle America”.

Not long ago, some of these states were central battlegrounds in US politics. Ohio was crucial for George W. Bush’s victory in 2004 – by just 2%, with accusations of irregularities – while Barack Obama won both Ohio and Iowa in both of his presidential campaigns. The young African American Senator from Chicago succeeded in joining a message of inclusion with economic populism that spoke to the difficulties of manufacturing communities and family farmers. This was enough to win over the votes of Americans seeking a change from the status quo of globalization, despite the suspicions of a man with a Muslim name who appeared to patronize the people of the Midwest by saying that economic difficulties led them to “cling to guns and religion… or anti-immigrant sentiment”.

A few years later, Donald Trump exploited those sentiments with a more aggressive campaign against globalization, again mixing economic and cultural issues, but this time prevailing through a message of division. The fact that about 9 million people who had voted for Obama subsequently voted for Trump, however, demonstrated that calls for change could be stronger than personal prejudices – at least for a important part of the electorate. Yet Trump’s approach to politics, and the reaction to it from the left, clearly accelerated the political polarization that elevated more extreme voices on both sides. This process had already begun in the Nineties due to ruthless politicians such as Newt Gingrich, and grown during the Obama presidency with the manipulation of the Republican base through the phenomenon of the Tea Party. The deleterious effects are evident today, in the difficulty of many Americans to even talk about political issues with others who may hold different views.

Democrats are far from blameless in this process, as they responded with a cultural shift toward “woke” ideology which alienated the white working class even further, and shifted the party’s focus from material economic solidarity to identity politics and language codes. States with a conservative cultural bent – which clearly applies to the area from western Pennsylvania through Ohio, Iowa and Kansas – moved rapidly to the right as cultural divisions prevailed over the prospect for a broad-based alliance for change in economic policy to benefit the middle class.

Joe Biden recognized the need to combine moderation on cultural issues with a populist message on the economy. It was enough to get him elected, but by that point, Iowa and Ohio were long gone for the Democrats: he lost both by about 8 percentage points in 2020. The Biden administration worked hard to help areas that had been damaged by free trade and outsourcing in recent decades, fashioning an industrial policy which would channel resources to precisely those areas which had shifted to Republicans in previous years. The strategy made a strong contribution in pushing the US institutions toward reindustrialization, but political gains did not follow for the Democrats. Rather, the damage done by the COVID-19 pandemic, which produced high inflation and further exacerbated cultural divisions, allowed Donald Trump to return to the White House in 2024, focusing on high costs, woke ideology, excessive immigration, and criticism of “forever wars”.

Trump’s about-face on his promises – provoking higher costs with indiscriminate tariffs and launching an unjustifiable war on Iran – along with his abuses of power in areas from immigration to DEI to vanity construction projects in Washington, D.C., have led to record low approval ratings for a president ahead of the midterms, and expectations of a Blue Wave in the November 3 elections. In this context, the Democratic Party is seeing opportunities it certainly did not expect just a year ago.

Read also: US Trade Policy after the 2026 Mid-Term Elections

Iowa is a top example. Democrat Josh Turek leads Republican Ashley Hinson by about one percentage point in the RealClearPolitics average – well within the margin of error for polls, but significant given the recent history of red domination in the state. A main issue in Iowa is agriculture, as input costs have grown for farmers and trade disputes have caused strong damage to the local economy. Hinson is focusing on expanding domestic fertilizer production and providing public relief for diesel costs. Turek links the difficulties to the war in Iran and tariffs, problems for which Trump bears all of the blame for most Americans.

A wild card in the race is the Libertarian candidate, Thomas Laehn, who is polling at about 2%. Libertarians are generally seen as pulling more votes away from Republicans, due to their anti-tax and anti-government rhetoric. In this case, Laehn offers a channel for conservative voters who are unhappy with the Trump administration, as he denounces the president’s use of emergency powers and warns the country is on “the road to monarchy” unless Congress acts to rein in the president. It’s hard to argue that this dynamic reflects a leftward shift of the state in general; rather, it is clear that Trump’s disasters are driving Republican voters away, while Democrats are effectively exploiting the discontent, hoping to avoid the negative undertow of cultural issues which has hurt them in recent years.

Ohio is a similar case, although not as extreme. Former Senator Sherrod Brown, the Democrat, is leading in the polls against current Senator Jon Husted – appointed to replace JD Vance when he became Vice President. Brown has always been a pro-labor economic populist, but that was not enough to keep him in office as the Democrats lost credibility with working class voters in the post-industrial economy. Just two years after his defeat, Brown is back with a similar message under the banner of “Dignity of Work”, while Republicans are trying to make the campaign about polarizing social issues such as gender policies and border security. Interestingly, surveys show that almost two-thirds of Ohio voters agree that politicians use trangender issues as a distraction to avoid addressing cost-of-living questions.

Read also: Pope Leo XIV, American Catholicism and international politics

This maturity on the part of voters gives the Democrats hope they can win back the Midwest: the party needs to focus on practical economic issues, and avoid being drawn into the type of culture wars that bolstered Trump’s success for years. It would be an illusion to see victory this year as a shift leftward overall, at least not in cultural terms. As proven over the years, the winning formula is economic populism and cultural moderation, especially in the country’s heartland. Whether that can be sustained in the future depends on the maturity and realism of the Democrats themselves.