On one hand, suburban voters delivered a stern rebuke to an unpopular president, ousting both Republican incumbents who had embraced Trump and those who had sought to distance themselves. Democrats made big gains in Midwestern gubernatorial races, a step in the direction of rebuilding once-favorable political terrain that Trump had claimed.

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On the other hand, rural voters stormed to the polls in virtually unprecedented numbers, delivering once again for the president they voted for in 2016 in a handful of critical Senate and gubernatorial elections in ruby red states.

Exit polls showed three-quarters of voters said Americans are becoming more divided.

Trump’s rhetoric in the closing days of the campaign exacerbated those divides, by turns strengthening Republican chances in Senate races where the GOP base turned out and weakening his party’s hopes of keeping the House.

The exit surveys showed Trump was a major factor in Tuesday’s elections. Nearly two-thirds of voters said they cast their ballot for Congress either to support Trump (26 percent) or oppose him (38 percent). More voters said they were casting a ballot to support Trump than oppose him in Senate races in Missouri, Indiana and North Dakota, three states where Republicans beat Democratic incumbents.

The Senate Democrats who lost their reelection bids on Tuesday all saw their vote shares drop in rural areas.

Farther down the ballot, the GOP bloodletting was worse: Democrats won five Texas state House seats in Dallas County, and several more legislative seats in suburban Denver, where the party won control of the state Senate.

In Chester County, outside Philadelphia, Republicans held eight of nine state House seats before the midterm elections. On Tuesday, Democrats won six of those nine.

“The suburbs were really good for us,” said Jessica Post, the executive director of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee. “We still have to compete and win in small towns across America.”

The results exacerbate a divide between booming urban centers and struggling rural communities that has been growing since the recession a decade ago.

In some states like Florida, that divide has bedeviled Democrats, who have hit their vote targets but lost elections as swarms of rural voters turn out to vote Republican.

Both Republicans and Democrats said the schisms between two regions at political loggerheads will challenge each side moving forward.

“Urban, suburban America is a growing part of the country. From a Republican standpoint, you have to figure out how to get back a lot of what you lost,” Cole said. “That depends on the president as much as it does on us. I’ll be very interested in the lessons the White House takes from this, because the president is always the face of the party.”

Democrats said their party should be encouraged by the number of seats won in states like Oklahoma, Iowa and Kansas — places where the party has failed to mount serious candidates in recent years, but where their candidates this year ousted Republican incumbents.

“I think Dems have finally heard loud and clear that you have to fight to win, you have to organize to win,” said Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti (D), a potential presidential contender who spent the midterms stumping for Democrats around the country.

“There’s no question that Dems need to be everywhere,” Garcetti said. “You’ve got to show up in these small towns, you’ve got to show up in rural areas, and you’ve got to listen.”