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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
World
Rachel Leingang in Arthur, Nebraska

‘Talking to every single person matters’: ‘prairie populists’ canvass the rural US heartland to win in midterms

Dan Osborn converses with an attendee after a town hall, with blurred people in the foreground
Dan Osborn, a nonpartisan candidate for US Senate in Nebraska, speaks with voters in Red Cloud on 1 October 2026. Photograph: Omaha World-Herald/Getty Images

In this final stretch of the US midterm elections, Democrats and independents could win back communities and towns across America’s rural heartlands through a combination of resurgent “prairie populism”, local despair over the impact of Donald Trump’s agenda and an old-fashioned tenet of shoe-leather politics: showing up everywhere.

When Dan Osborn rolled into one of the most rural counties in Nebraska earlier this month, he started walking into businesses in the tiny main drag of Arthur, ready to meet whomever he could in the town of about 100.

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