In small towns and rural communities, young voters say they don’t feel seen by leaders: NPR

Andrew Tait has a long day at work. He combines his shifts as a warehouse supervisor for a nearby factory with early morning and late evening duties on the family’s small farm in Virginia’s rural Shenandoah Valley.

He doesn’t hesitate to call himself lucky. But no matter how much the 36-year-old father of two young daughters works, he says, they barely get by — and the goalposts for success keep shifting.

“I have a mortgage and it’s paid every month. But the thought of my children’s birthdays or holidays terrifies me,” Tait said. “What if the grocery bill goes up again? I mean, I’m on a budget.”

He is part of a generation of young Americans facing a daunting reality: that of inflated prices and growing concerns about their financial future. It’s an experience that Gen Z and millennial voters across the United States are facing, each in their own way. For those living in rural and small-town communities, many feel their struggles have gone unnoticed and unaddressed by politicians vying for their support.

Over the summer, Tait decided to write an essay called “Living in the Shadow of the American Dream.” In it, he explained that he and his partner had postponed their wedding because he feared that if they did, it would force her and their daughters off Medicaid, and that his job’s health care plan was too expensive for the entire family.

“I am not ashamed of our life. It is honest work and full of love,” Tait wrote. “However, I am ashamed that in a country as rich as ours, people like us are left behind.”

By the next presidential election, Generation Z and millennials are expected to make up more than half of the electorate. But many, including Tait, say they are increasingly unhappy with political leaders as they grapple with long-standing financial problems.

“I’m really tired of voting for the one I hate the least,” said Tait, who declined to specify how he voted in the 2024 presidential election but said politicians should focus on improving access to quality food, health care and education.

“I want someone to inspire me,” he added. “It doesn’t matter if you’re red or blue, whatever side of the aisle you’re on, come on guys, what do we want?”

It’s a sentiment common to many young people today, and it’s part of the reason President Trump’s economic message was able to resonate with a larger portion of young voters last year, says Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist University Institute for Public Opinion.

“He connects with people who are very dissatisfied with the way things are going. And therefore, being a candidate who is going to disrupt and change things is a major appeal to a part of the electorate who is feeling this economic stress,” he said. “It may be the most profound among young people.”

But these economic pressures are nothing new for many people in rural areas, says Nicholas Jacobs, a government professor at Colby College. These communities have faced such problems for decades, but today, he says, the difference is that the policy has changed.

“What I believe to be true, based on my survey of rural people and rural youth, is that they don’t feel like they have two alternatives. They don’t feel like the Democratic Party is giving them a set of answers to these problems,” he said. “I don’t think most rural people feel like the Democratic Party is thinking about these issues.”

Doubt the American dream

After growing up during periods of financial volatility and uncertainty, economic concerns continue to weigh heavily on Generation Z and Millennial Americans.

Young people collectively represent more than 60% of the workforce and are poised to overtake older generations in terms of educational attainment.

However, many people still worry about the success of their lives. According to an April Marist survey, seven in 10 Gen Zers say it’s difficult to find a job right now, as do nearly six in 10 millennials. A Pew Research Center analysis from last year also found that both generations are less likely to say the American dream is still possible, compared to generations before them.

Housing is a major concern, with house prices and rents increasing at a faster rate than wages over the past two decades. The median age of first-time home buyers has also increased significantly, from 28 in 1991 to 38 last year, according to the National Association of Realtors.

This combination of concerns has pushed some young Americans toward more left-wing populist ideas and caused others to feel dissatisfied with today’s political leaders.

“I don’t really think there’s anyone taking care of it,” said Paul Staley, 35, who lives in a small town outside Birmingham, Alabama, with his wife and children.

He is one of more than a thousand young people who responded to an NPR call about how economic concerns have shaped their lives.

Staley works as a field service engineer repairing medical equipment. Raised in a working-class family, he sees clear differences between his life and that of his father.

“He could afford a brand new Corvette as a butcher, but these days, with a college degree and 10 years of experience, I couldn’t really hope to afford a brand new car like that,” he said. “The difference is too big. You don’t have the same type of opportunities.”

Staley previously voted for Trump, but says he has since shifted more toward the political center, acknowledging that while he remains interested in the president’s economic agenda and has benefited from his tax-cut policies, he wants to see additional action on issues like rising costs and worker protections.

Those two issues in particular have drawn him more recently to Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic candidate for New York City mayor.

“These issues push people towards their ideologies – I don’t want to say extremes – but towards the ends of the political spectrum…I think the answer is more somewhere in the middle,” he said. “Hard work must mean more.”

Feeling left behind

For others, what matters is opportunity rather than politics.

Julie Hill, 22, lives in rural northwest Pennsylvania. She says politicians often neglect communities like hers.

“It can be hard to feel seen,” said Hill, who identifies as an independent but voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris last year. “It seems like rural areas are sometimes left behind.”

Hill is unemployed, currently in an outpatient rehabilitation program as she deals with mental health issues, and she has also had to support herself financially after losing her family in recent years.

His dream is to one day own a house, with enough land to raise animals. She loves horses and is still pained by the memory of having to give up her own horse as a teenager when finances became tight.

That said, Hill admits that homeownership is a long way off for her, recalling that all the landowners she knows either inherited their land or bought decades earlier, when prices were lower.

“They kind of had that support from the get-go. They kind of had a starting point, I guess, whereas I’m starting from zero,” she said. “It seems like even a single acre around here is the size of what a house was probably 30 or 40 years ago.”

Hill wants to hope that his American dream can come true, but says it doesn’t seem possible at the moment.

“The story of Sisyphus and the rock, that’s kind of how it feels. You push that rock every day just to make it come back down,” she said. “I’ve been feeling this for a long time, so please be kind to be able to get the rock up and then be able to start building.”