Trump gained this election in cities while expanding support in rural America

Democrats might have to do some soul-searching after another series of losses in middle America.

President-elect Donald Trump continued the Republicans' dominance of small towns and rural America while also gaining in the suburbs and cities.

"The story of this election is that Trump closed the margins everywhere," said , an expert in rural politics who teaches at Colby College in Maine. "In urban America and suburban America. Rural America, too."

The northern "blue wall" fell, with Trump winning Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.

Trump got Pennsylvania voters to go with a Republican presidential candidate for just the second time in over 30 years.

"I was just looking at some Pennsylvania numbers. And in terms of raw votes, Trump's swing in rural America back to ... 2016 levels, it's just (in the) few thousands. But his swing in the suburbs and his swings in even cities like Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, those are tens of thousands of votes," Jacobs said. "And so that's what really made the difference statewide."

A survey of the electorate from The Associated Press showed Trump gained across community types.

He captured 63% of the vote in rural areas and small towns, up from 60% in 2020.

Trump trailed Vice President Kamala Harris in the cities and suburbs, but he narrowed the gaps.

He added two percentage points to his support in both cities and suburbs.

Trump solidified his areas of strength and chipped away at the areas the Democrats needed to turn in strong performances.

"The whole country moved to the right in the voting booth," said , the director of the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University.

Republicans also flipped the Senate and look like they might hold onto the House, continuing a roughly 30-year trend of a new president entering office with unified government.

Republicans have come to dominate rural politics over the last 40 years.

A rural identity is composed of many similar attitudes and beliefs that rural communities, regardless of the region, are culturally maligned, that they're poorer, and their struggles are the fault of government policies, according to Jacobs.

There's a common feeling among rural voters that deliberate choices were made that more or less sacrificed rural communities.

Rural voters don't trust political elites, but they want to be heard.

And they feel like they've been ignored by the Democratic Party, Jacobs said.

Jacobs said the "Democratic Party brand has become just, simply put, toxic in rural America."

It wasn't always that way.

Bill Clinton won his home state of Arkansas , along with other present-day deep-red states such as Louisiana, Missouri, Kentucky and Tennessee.

"Those days are over," Oklahoma State University political scientist said.

The undisputed long-term political realignment has put some of those states out of reach for Democrats, at least in the foreseeable future.

But McKee said it would still be smart of Democrats to put in the time and effort in small towns and rural areas to try and shave off some of the GOP support in those communities.

The opposite apparently happened in Trump's victory this year, with his improved performance in cities and suburbs.

Jacobs said some of the factors that have shifted rural politics to the right appear to have played a role this year for voters in cities and suburbs, too.

"It's not place-based, but it's class-based," he said.

Some folks in cities felt overlooked by Washington elites and saw Trump, or at least change, as the answer.

AP voter surveys show Trump performed better this year than he did in 2020 among people with less income.

Trump captured half the vote from households making under $50,000, a five-percentage point improvement for him over four years ago.

The "diploma divide" grew, as 55% of those without a college degree sided with Trump. That's up from 51% in 2020.

Overall, 39% of voters said the economy and jobs were the top issues facing the country.

Over 60% of Trump's supporters saw the economy and jobs as their biggest concerns.

Overall, 63% of people said in the AP voter surveys that the economy was not so good or even that it was poor.

Under 30% of Harris' supporters gave the economy bad marks, compared to nearly 70% of Trump's supporters.

And 83% of voters said they wanted to see substantial change in how the country is run, with Trump supporters 14 percentage points more likely to express a desire for significant change.

People just want politics to work, Loge said. And a lot of folks didn't see the incumbent party as capable of fixing their problems.

"They don't want to think about politics. That's the politician's job. If things aren't working, they'll fire the politicians and hire a new set, just like you do the plumber," Loge said. "For a lot of people, things weren't working. Things aren't working. For others for whom they are working. It feels like it's not working. And Donald Trump has spent four years saying everything's broken. So, you fired the folks who are in charge, and you hire a new batch of folks to fix it."

, the Political Management program director at GW, said inflation, particularly the higher costs of groceries and housing, was a problem for voters. Even if inflation has essentially been corralled, the economy is growing and wages are growing.

"There's a saying, you can't outrun a person's feelings," Belt said.

Harris entered the race with just 107 days to go and was never able to put together an economic message that resonated with voters, he said.

"And what she came up with was pretty hastily cobbled together, and because it was, it looked like it was pandering," Belt said.

McKee said that Harris was anchored down by bad short-term conditions, and the Democrats' messaging wasn't able to overcome that.

"I do think that the problem that Democrats have had for some time is that they're not connecting with downscale, non-college educated voters, who used to be a key component of the Democratic Party," McKee said.

Harris was a progressive who ran as more of a centrist, he said.

That may have struck some voters as disingenuous.

Harris might have been seen as a "left coast liberal" by some heartland voters, which did her no favors.

But McKee said there are Democrats who have the potential to appeal to middle America more in future elections.

He suggested , a representative from Virginia who is running for governor, could be a strong Democratic candidate in 2028.

Another possibility would be of Kentucky, who leads a state that hasn't voted Democratic in a presidential race since Clinton ran in 1996.

"These are the kinds of folks who know they can get some of the middle (voters)," McKee said.

Loge said Democrats need to talk to people where they are about things they care about if they want to give themselves more paths to victory outside the cities and affluent suburbs.

He called it "pragmatic progressivism."

"There are a handful of states that Democrats have to count on winning that don't touch an ocean if they hope to get elected to the White House," Loge said.