More than a year into President Donald Trump\u2019s sweeping immigration crackdown, a poll finds that voters in rural parts of the country are divided on whether those immigration policies have benefited or harmed their communities.<\/p>\n
In the Associated Press-KFF survey of more than 2,000 rural voters in August, about a third said the Trump administration\u2019s immigration enforcement had been positive for their community and about a third said it had been negative. The remaining 3 in 10, roughly, said it had no impact.<\/p>\n
Trump promised tough enforcement on the campaign trail in 2024, and the survey highlights how a cornerstone of his base, rural supporters of his Make America Great Again movement, are especially likely to say they see a benefit where they live from the Republican president\u2019s stringent immigration policies.<\/p>\n
Yet many rural voters also say immigrants are a key part of their local economies, and some believe Trump\u2019s immigration actions have gone too far.<\/p>\n
Laura Leigh Taylor, a 37-year-old farmer who voted for Trump in 2024, said she disapproves of the wide-ranging scope of Trump\u2019s immigration crackdown, which resulted in a friend\u2019s hardworking father being deported.<\/p>\n
\u201cI understand getting rid of the rapists and the murderers,\u201d she said. \u201cBut all the people that fell in between, that really weren\u2019t doing nothing but taking care of their family, \u2026 they got torn from their families.\u201d<\/p>\n
Taylor now regrets her vote for Trump. As a resident of Smithville, Georgia, a town of about 600, Taylor thinks she will vote for Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff in November because, she said, the Democrats have been the ones talking about families being uprooted by Trump\u2019s immigration enforcement.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust because of that simple fact, I\u2019m going to go with him,\u201d Taylor said.<\/p>\n
Taylor regrets voting for Trump in 2024. (Matt Odom for KFF Health News)<\/p>\n
Most Rural Voters Want Politicians To Talk About Immigration<\/strong><\/p>\n Roughly three-quarters of rural voters say it\u2019s \u201cextremely\u201d or \u201cvery\u201d important for midterm candidates to talk about immigration, though that\u2019s lower than the share who want them to address the cost of living, fraud in government programs, or healthcare costs.<\/p>\n Rural voters don\u2019t overwhelmingly think Trump\u2019s immigration policies have helped their communities, but they are also less likely than the general public to say that Trump has overstepped in his efforts, which have involved mass deportations and rapid deportations of immigrants to countries where they have no ties.<\/p>\n Only about 4 in 10 rural voters say Trump has \u201cgone too far\u201d in restricting legal immigration or deporting immigrants living in the U.S. without authorization, below the 55% of U.S. adults overall who said the same in a September AP-NORC poll.<\/p>\n John Thomas, a 55-year-old from Liberty, Kentucky, supports Trump\u2019s efforts to deport people without legal status. Thomas, who has just been approved for disability benefits after injuring his back in 2008, believes they put too much of a burden on the healthcare system. Regulating immigration, he said, is a means of providing better healthcare to Americans.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019ve been taking from everybody,\u201d Thomas said of immigrants. \u201cPeople that really need this stuff can\u2019t get it because of them.\u201d<\/p>\n David Grabowski, a professor of healthcare policy at Harvard Medical School, said that research suggests immigrants use less healthcare than native-born Americans. \u201cIt is hard to argue that they are placing an undue burden on the system,\u201d he said, because many immigrants work in healthcare and pay taxes.<\/p>\n Most Rural Voters See Immigrants\u2019 Economic Importance<\/strong><\/p>\n Immigrants often play key roles in sustaining local industries, including by filling jobs in manufacturing, healthcare, and agriculture. The survey suggests the vast majority of rural voters see immigrants in the country legally as an important part of their local economies.<\/p>\n Shannon Monnat, director of the Center for Policy Research at Syracuse University and president of the Rural Sociological Society, said immigration has been a demographic lifeline for much of rural America. Rural areas have been losing young adults for years, she said.<\/p>\n \u201cFor a lot of small towns, immigrants are the reason the school and hospital stayed open and the county didn\u2019t shrink,\u201d Monnat said.<\/p>\n About 7 in 10 rural voters see immigrants who are in the country legally as \u201cvery\u201d or \u201csomewhat\u201d important to their local economies, and a similar share say the same about temporary or seasonal agriculture workers. Hundreds of thousands of immigrants take seasonal jobs on U.S. farms each year, with most of them coming from Mexico, on H-2A visas.<\/p>\n Rural voters with a connection to agriculture and farming are more likely than those without one to say that temporary or seasonal workers are \u201cvery important\u201d to their local economies, the poll found.<\/p>\n Jeff Miller, a 56-year-old Republican hydro blaster and vacuum technician, has mostly been pleased with Trump\u2019s agenda, and he believes things are \u201cheading in the right direction.\u201d The one thing Miller has struggled with is Trump\u2019s aggressive immigration policy, which he blames for the deportation of a \u201creally good worker\u201d and friend, who was removed from the U.S. when his work permit expired.<\/p>\n Miller, from Racine, Ohio, said he would support exceptions for hard workers, or just a less aggressive approach.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s kind of an up-and-down thing because I lost a really good friend over that,\u201d Miller said.<\/p>\n Rural voters are much less likely to say immigrants who are in the country illegally are beneficial, but 45% say they are at least \u201csomewhat\u201d important to local economies.<\/p>\n Albert Martinez, a 70-year-old Democrat from San Diego, Texas, voted for Trump in 2016, but he now believes the Trump administration has \u201cgone amok.\u201d The Army veteran said he is a proponent of getting criminals out of the country, but that is not what he is seeing happening with current immigration enforcement.<\/p>\n \u201cThey started doing everybody across the board,\u201d Martinez said. \u201cInnocent kids and women, people who work in restaurants, people who work in hotels, people who are building homes, people who are doing masonry work, and innocent, good, taxpaying people. Taxpayers. It\u2019s insane.\u201d<\/p>\n Rural MAGA Voters Support Trump\u2019s Immigration Policies<\/strong><\/p>\n Some of Trump\u2019s most loyal supporters \u2014 rural Republicans who consider themselves MAGA supporters \u2014 are about twice as likely as rural, non-MAGA Republicans to see a benefit to Trump\u2019s immigration policies where they live.<\/p>\n Roughly 4 in 10 rural voters identify as MAGA Republicans, while about 1 in 10 are Republicans but not MAGA supporters.<\/p>\n About two-thirds of rural MAGA Republicans say Trump\u2019s immigration policies have had a positive impact where they live. Roughly half say the Trump administration has \u201cnot gone far enough\u201d on deporting immigrants in the country illegally, while about half say his actions have been \u201cabout right.\u201d<\/p>\n Katherine Reed, a 27-year-old Republican who supports the MAGA movement, has been pleased to see the Trump administration\u2019s deportation policies play out. The resident of Mount Pleasant, Texas, believes her community has always been safe but that the administration\u2019s policies have had a positive impact by reducing violent crime nationwide, saying, \u201cIt\u2019s made life for people a lot safer.\u201d<\/p>\n She believes if someone comes to America, they should \u201crespect the law of the land\u201d and \u201cdo it legally.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI want really amazing people to become Americans,\u201d Reed said. \u201cThat\u2019s the whole point of America.\u201d<\/p>\n About the Poll<\/strong><\/p>\n The KFF-AP Rural Voters Survey was conducted online and by telephone Aug. 12-24, 2026, among 2,241 registered voters living in rural areas, defined as census tracts that fall within codes 5-10 of the U.S. Department of Agriculture\u2019s 2020 Rural-Urban Commuting Area codes. Voters were reached through a combination of the probability-based SSRS Opinion Panel and a registration-based sample from the L2 voter file. Overall results have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points, including design effects due to weighting. Error margins are larger for subgroups. In collaboration with the AP, KFF researchers worked to design the survey sample and questionnaire and analyze and report findings.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n This report is from a collaboration between KFF Health News and The Associated Press.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n KFF Health News<\/a> is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF\u2014an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n This article<\/a> first appeared on KFF Health News<\/a> and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" More than a year into President Donald Trump\u2019s sweeping immigration crackdown, a poll finds that voters in rural parts of the country are divided on whether those immigration policies have benefited or harmed their communities. In the Associated Press-KFF survey of more than 2,000 rural voters in August, about a third said the Trump administration\u2019s…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":15891,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15890","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15890"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15890"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15890\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}