WAVERLY, Iowa Democrats throughout the country are winning back a small but potentially critical number of voters in counties and cities that flipped to support President Donald Trump four years ago, thanks to a renewed outreach from Democrats and the loss of the populist edge the Republican Party developed in 2016.

These areas, where voters are disproportionately white, rural and older, and without college degrees, are mostly in the northern half of the country, especially in the Midwest. They have disproportionate power in the nations political system because of the overrepresentation of rural states in the Senate and the Electoral College.

The blue wall has to be reestablished, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden told reporters in Pennsylvania on Monday, expressing optimism about winning the three traditionally Democratic-leaning states Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan that Trump narrowly won over Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Few operatives in either party expect Democrats to win back these voters or the small counties and cities they live in entirely, but the partys gains with them are playing a crucial role in creating a path to 270 electoral votes that looks increasingly solid for former Vice President Biden.

For many of these voters, the issues match the top reasons anyone in the electorate is backing Biden: They believe Trump has grossly mishandled the coronavirus pandemic that has killed more than 250,000 Americans and think Republicans are threatening key health care protections. But operatives in both parties also said theyve been surprised at the ability of Biden, a career politician, to steal the mantle of populism from Trump.

People are pissed, said Matt Morrison, the executive director of Working America, the political organizing arm of the AFL-CIO, describing what his group hears from voters in text messages and phone calls. Theyre angry. They think the entire system is corrupt. And theyre voting for Joe Biden.

While Biden and his campaign are leading the charge, the shift is also occurring further down the ballot, providing key boosts to Democrats running for Senate and governor in rural states and for House candidates battling for control of the exurban districts.

On a Monday earlier this month, Theresa Greenfield, the Democratic U.S. Senate candidate in Iowa, was trying to win over more of these voters with a swing through four counties in the states northeast corner that had backed Democrat Barack Obama in 2012 and Trump in 2016. Each socially distanced, mask-wearing stop was designed to highlight a different reason why voters in these sparsely populated rural counties might be tempted to abandon the GOP Sen. Joni Ernst and the Republican Party.

CrawDaddy Outdoors was surviving people can kayak even during a pandemic but many of its neighbors on the main commercial drag in Waverly were struggling. The owner of Scott Pharmacy in nearby Fayette talked about how consolidation in the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries was making it harder for independent drugstores like his own to survive. Trumps trade war had hit the timber business in Elkader, to the east, blocking it from selling to Chinese customers. In Decorah, the owner of an organic farm had taken a part-time job at the U.S. Postal Service to help make ends meet.

At each stop, Greenfield, whose accent and relentless cheeriness peg her as a native daughter of the Midwest, pointed to solutions: A focus on vocational schools and community colleges, along with new infrastructure funding, could boost the economy. A public option and granting Medicare the ability to negotiate drug prices would help seniors afford prescriptions. Ditching Trumps preference for bilateral trade deals could open up foreign markets. She would work to increase access to capital for small farmers.