Independent US Senate candidates are rising across the plains and mountains of the West, signaling rural voters’ disenchantment with the national Democratic Party even amid mounting discontent with Republican rule in Washington.

Independent Dan Osborn’s challenge has prompted Republicans and their allies to pour more than $42 million into Nebraska, about double the amount from Osborn and his allies, according to AdImpact. President Donald Trump flew in for a rally to defend embattled incumbent Senator Pete Ricketts, a former two-term governor of the typically Republican state.

Independent candidates running on populist themes similar to Osborn’s campaign also are the leading challengers to GOP nominees in Montana, South Dakota and Idaho.

While it will be difficult for any of them to overcome their states’ heavy Republican tilt and the considerable obstacles independent campaigns confront in an entrenched two-party system, their appeal is a flashing warning heading into the 2028 presidential election that neither party is satisfying a broad yearning for a different kind of politics.

“People out here say, ‘I want things to change,’” said Heidi Heitkamp, a former North Dakota Democratic senator who lost her reelection bid in 2018, but they “don’t feel respected by the Democratic Party.”Workers in the region’s natural resource extraction industries such as oil, gas and mining have been alienated by some stances of national Democrats, while others feel a cultural distance from the party’s national brand, she added.

The independent candidates have all said they would not caucus with either party. But ousting Republican incumbents would still help Democrats trying to win the Senate majority. Their candidacies are also forcing Republicans on the defensive in traditional GOP strongholds.

In rural America, about half of voters believe the economy is worse than when Trump took office, but only 39% said they would vote for a Democrat for Congress, according an August poll by the Associated Press and KFF, a nonpartisan health research group. The Western independents share anti-establishment messages about taking on corporate power, career politicians and corruption. All are military veterans, anchoring their life stories in a traditionalist credential of patriotism and public service.

Osborn, a machinist and former union official, showed the potential advantage of running without a party label two years ago. He did much better than expected against incumbent Republican Deb Fischer, though still lost to her by 7 percentage points in a state Donald Trump won by more than 20. He’s championed legislation to force more competition into the credit card industry, stronger antitrust enforcement against meatpacking conglomerates and other corporate giants, and a “right-to-repair” so farmers and others can fix their equipment without having to go to manufacturer-authorized dealers.

Republican Ricketts, the son of billionaire TD Ameritrade founder Joe Ricketts, and GOP groups are attacking Osborn this year as “Democrat Dan” in an effort to strip away his crossover appeal. Bernadette Breslin, a spokeswoman for Senate Republicans’ national campaign arm, derided bids by Osborn and other unaffiliated candidates as a “fake independent circus.”

Senate candidates Seth Bodnar in Montana, Brian Bengs in South Dakota, and Todd Achilles in Idaho are now following in the Osborn mold.

Bodnar, a former Green Beret, Rhodes Scholar and president of the University of Montana, has attracted backing from many of his state’s most prominent Democrats and raised more money than his Republican opponent, prosecutor Kurt Alme. But Democratic candidate Alani Bankhead is likely to divide the anti-Republican vote there — unlike the other three states, where Democratic nominees dropped out in favor of the independent candidates.

So far, only Osborn is seen as a threat to win by nonpartisan analysts like the Cook Political Report, which nonetheless rates the Nebraska contest as “likely” to go Republican.

“It has to be a perfect storm for one of these independents to prevail,” said Jessica Taylor, the Cook Political Report editor who oversees analysis of Senate contests.

Still, independent public polling is scant in several of the races, and the candidates are running in low-population states where retail politics can have an impact.

Nationally, 45% of Americans identify as independents, according to Gallup polling, the highest portion on record in a survey that goes back decades. A social media video actor Matthew McConaughey posted Sunday urging Americans to consider casting their midterm votes for independent candidates had been viewed more than 6 million times on x.com by Thursday.

Several Democratic Senate candidates who have seized national attention by running neck-and-neck races in longtime Republican strongholds also have made differentiating themselves from the national party key features of their campaigns.

Heitkamp cited Adam Hamilton, a megachurch pastor running in Kansas, and James Talarico, a Presbyterian seminarian running in Texas, as trying to reclaim faith as a party value, “cutting into that narrative that Democrats are godless.”Hamilton, who considered running as an independent, barely even mentions he is a Democrat and has said he would vote against retaining New York’s Chuck Schumer as the party’s Senate leader.

Hamilton’s opponent, Republican Senator Roger Marshall, has sought to align the pastor with Schumer, mentioning the New York senator 17 times during a debate Wednesday night — a tactic Hamilton called “interesting.”“I’m somebody who stands in the middle,” Hamilton said.

In Iowa, Democratic Senate candidate Josh Turek presents himself as a “common sense prairie populist” and told Jon Stewart he deliberately projects “some distance” from the national party.

Montana’s Jon Tester, a former three-term Democratic senator first elected in a 2006 backlash against Washington corruption scandals and the Iraq War with parallels to this year’s environment, said the separation independents gain from the national party brand comes at a cost.

Independents don’t have institutional support or the slew of outside money national party leaders can help attract, said Tester, who endorsed Bodnar but said he unsuccessfully urged him to run as a Democrat.

“That’s hard,” Tester said. “What compounds it is that there are so many races that are in the mix this cycle.”Hundreds of millions of dollars are supporting Democratic candidates in other battlegrounds, including Ohio, Texas, Maine, Alaska, Iowa, Michigan, and lately, Kansas, South Carolina and even Mississippi.