A new poll from KFF-AP shows that rural voters support the Make America Healthy Again movement, but they don’t think it’s had a positive impact on their lives.

A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:

Make America Healthy Again movement – or MAHA – is known for embracing healthier eating and vaccine skepticism. It’s been an important factor in helping President Donald Trump expand his appeal beyond a traditional conservative base, but a new poll by the Associated Press and KFF signals some potential discontent ahead of the midterms. Sarah Jane Tribble is here to explain. She’s a reporter with our partner KFF Health News.

Sarah, who are these potentially discontented people in this poll?

SARAH JANE TRIBBLE, BYLINE: Right. So this is a poll of more than 2,000 registered voters. All of them rural people from small towns and farming communities across the country. Rural Americans, as you know, are a group that skews Republican and they’ve been an important voting block for Trump in past elections. In this poll, about half of rural voters identified as supporters of the MAHA movement. And this is really interesting. These are voters who care deeply about health issues, but 68% of them said that President Trump’s policies have not helped improve the health and wellbeing of their communities.

MARTÍNEZ: So some of the people who supported Trump and Republicans in the past are not fully satisfied now.

TRIBBLE: That’s right.

MARTÍNEZ: OK.

TRIBBLE: I spoke with Mike Jager from Iowa, who identifies as MAGA and MAHA, and he says the American dream is gone because institutions like the government, higher education and corporate employers have failed.

MIKE JAGER: We are not convinced the institutions have our best interest at heart. We don’t believe they’re looking out for America’s best interests.

TRIBBLE: My reporting partner, Ali Swenson, is a national politics reporter at the Associated Press. She was the first to speak with Jager, and he told her that he still expects Trump’s health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to right the ship.

MARTÍNEZ: Now, we’ve heard how the Trump administration loves to talk about parts of its healthcare agenda. For example, $15 billion rural health fund and efforts to lower drug costs. Is that making a difference to these people?

TRIBBLE: Yeah, yeah. Prescription drugs are a relative bright spot in the poll. About 30% of all voters said the administration had a positive impact on drug prices. But the prices they said are the most concerning are gas, groceries and paying for healthcare. I talked with 62-year-old Kim Solis, who’s an independent and lives in rural Texas. She and her husband have a handyman business and get their insurance on the Affordable Care Act marketplace. The cost of that plan has skyrocketed, and Solis is worried about how her family could recover if something really bad happened.

KIM SOLIS: Certainly, we’d be in, you know, a world of hurt trying to take money out of savings or getting it out of our 401(k) just to be able to do something about it. My brother-in-law, for an example, he has to have a shoulder replacement, and he can’t even afford it right now.

MARTÍNEZ: Yeah, that’s rough. So what can these rural voters then maybe tell us about the midterms.

TRIBBLE: Yeah. I posed that exact question to Tim Slack, a sociology professor at Louisiana State University, and he studies rural demographics and economic issues. He was hesitant to predict anything specific, but he did say that rural voters are connecting the cost of gas and even groceries at the local Walmart with the Trump administration’s policy choices. Now, to be clear, Slack doesn’t expect rural Republicans to go to the polls and to vote for a Democrat. But he says they might just sit this one out.

MARTÍNEZ: Alright. Sarah Jane Tribble is with our partner KFF Health News.

Sarah, thank you.

TRIBBLE: Thank you.

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