President Donald Trump’s approval rating among rural Americans—historically one of his strongest constituencies—has slipped into negative territory for the first time since early 2025 in a national polling series.
A Fox News poll released this week shows Trump’s standing across rural America has sharply deteriorated in the network’s polling trend. His net approval among rural voters has swung 34 points since early 2025, falling from +20 to -14. Among rural white voters, the drop is nearly as steep—a 33-point slide from +27 to -6.
Key Points
- The latest Fox News poll shows declining support across core voter groups, including Trump’s Republican base.
- Overall, just 29 percent of voters approved of Trump’s handling of the economy, while 71 percent disapproved, according to the survey, with just 30 percent of rural Americans approving and 70 percent disapproving.
- Farm bankruptcies surged 46 percent in 2025, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation.
- Rising fertilizer and fuel costs linked to the war in Iran and global energy disruptions are squeezing farmers.
- Controversy over Chinese farmland ownership has intensified frustration in rural communities.
Trump’s approval among rural voters turning negative this month, according to the Fox News poll, reflects growing dissatisfaction tied to economic and agricultural pressures.
Rural voters have long formed the backbone of Republican electoral strength, making any erosion in this bloc politically consequential ahead of this year’s midterm elections.
Mounting financial strain is also beginning to reshape political attitudes, with farmers and rural communities increasingly questioning their support and potentially altering turnout in battleground states.
Why It Matters
The shift reflects deepening economic and political strain across rural America, where rising costs, policy uncertainty and global shocks are converging on the farm economy.
For Trump, whose electoral path has relied heavily on rural margins, even small movements in this group could have outsized impacts in Senate and House races this year.
What To Know
The latest data comes from a Fox News poll conducted May 15-18 among 1,002 registered voters nationwide.
It was jointly run by Beacon Research, a Democratic-aligned firm, and Shaw & Company Research, a Republican-aligned firm, using a mix of live telephone interviews and online responses, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
Respondents were contacted via landlines (109), cellphones (635) and text-to-web online surveys (258), drawn randomly from a national voter file to ensure representativeness.
While the topline figures show Trump’s overall approval rating at 39 percent, just 1 point above its lowest level in this series, the more significant movement lies beneath the surface.
Support has weakened across several core groups, including rural and rural white voters, where backing is now at its lowest level in the series.
Trump’s net approval among rural voters overall fell from +20 in March 2025 to -14 in May 2026, with the sharpest drop coming in the latest reading, when net approval among rural voters fell 16 points from April (+2) to May (-14).
Among rural white voters, Trump’s net approval fell steadily over the past year—from a commanding +27 margin in early 2025 to -6 in May 2026—a sharp reversal in a once solidly favorable bloc.
Meanwhile, the same Fox News poll shows that Trump’s approval among Republicans has fallen to its lowest level of his second term, a notable shift in a group that has typically remained more stable than independents or Democrats.
Republican pollster Daron Shaw, who conducts the survey with Democrat Chris Anderson, said the president’s support is beginning to erode even within his own base.
“Despite consistently strong GOP support, the president’s numbers are leaking a bit,” Shaw said. “Make no mistake; it’s all about affordability. Independents jumped ship in 2025, and now non-MAGA Republicans and other core constituencies are wavering.”
That decline aligns with broader economic dissatisfaction captured elsewhere in the poll.
Just 29 percent of voters approved of Trump’s handling of the economy, while 71 percent disapproved, pointing to widespread concern about affordability and cost pressures. Rural voters tracked closely: 30 percent approved and 70 percent disapproved.
Inflation remained his weakest issue, with just 24 percent approving and 76 percent disapproving overall—the most negative rating of any policy area tested. Among rural voters, 28 percent approved and 71 percent disapproved.
Foreign policy was also firmly underwater nationally (38 percent approve, 62 percent disapprove), though rural voters were slightly less negative at 42 percent approval to 58 percent disapproval.
Even areas that had previously been more resilient are showing erosion. On border security, voters are at 49 percent approval to 51 percent disapproval—the first time the issue has tipped into net negative territory during this term—while rural voters still lean toward approval (54-45).
Trump’s handling of the recent China summit is similarly underwater overall, with 54 percent disapproval to 45 percent approval, but rural voters are narrowly positive, at 50 percent approval to 49 percent disapproval.
Why Farmers Are Driving the Shift
At the center of the change is the worsening financial outlook facing farmers and rural communities.
Farm bankruptcies rose 46 percent in 2025 compared with the previous year, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation, reflecting mounting debt and rising production costs across the sector.
Those pressures have intensified in 2026. The escalation of the Iran conflict has driven up fertilizer and diesel prices, with higher energy costs feeding directly into farming operations and squeezing already-thin margins.
“We’re not financially able” to operate as normal, Willis Nelson, a Louisiana farmer, told MS Now, explaining that his family has had to cut back on fertilizer use because “we just don’t have the margin.”
The strain is widespread.
“It’s tough, you know, very tough on us,” Nelson added, as his multigenerational farm faces the prospect of bankruptcy.
Other farmers describe similar pressures in stark financial terms.
Fred Yoder, an Ohio farmer, said in comments shared by Farm Action from an interview with US Farm Report that rising input costs are overwhelming operations.
“It’s costing us about $1,500 of cash per day to run two tractors,” he said, adding that fertilizer prices have surged dramatically. “I spent many years buying potash for $90 a ton, and now it’s $670 to $700 a ton.
“Our big problem is the input costs. I haven’t seen anything this bad since the 1980s.”
Trade tensions have compounded the strain. Reduced Chinese demand for U.S. agricultural exports, particularly soybeans, has left many producers facing weaker prices and fewer reliable markets.
Against this backdrop, Trump’s recent comments defending Chinese purchases of U.S. farmland have added to unease.
During his trip to Beijing this month, Trump argued that restricting foreign ownership would depress land values, a shift that has unsettled farmers already wary of foreign control of agricultural assets.
Farmers’ frustration is increasingly reflected in the polling data, as economic strain begins to erode support in one of Trump’s core constituencies.
White House Response
White House officials pushed back on the polling, describing the figures as a short-term snapshot rather than evidence of a lasting shift in voter sentiment.
Spokesman Kush Desai argued that the U.S. economy has remained “resilient” under Trump, adding that “as this agenda continues taking effect, and as Congress passes more of the president’s healthcare and housing affordability agenda, the best is yet to come in the second Trump term.”
In a separate statement, spokesman Davis Ingle pointed to Trump’s 2024 victory as a more definitive measure of support, saying “the ultimate poll was November 5th 2024 when nearly 80 million Americans overwhelmingly elected President Trump to deliver on his popular and commonsense agenda.”
Ingle added that the administration is “working tirelessly to create jobs, cool inflation, increase housing affordability, and more,” arguing that the gains made so far are “just the beginning” as the president’s agenda continues to unfold.
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