Former Sens. Joe Donnelly and Heidi Heitkamp are teaming up to launch a new initiative aimed at helping Democrats reach rural voters.

Both lost their re-election bids last year in red states, where Donald Trump won by double-digit margins in 2016 — Donnelly, here in Indiana, and Heitkamp in North Dakota.

Now, they're starting a project called One Country. Its goal: Teach Democrats how to reconnect with voters from the heartland.

"On issues of faith and family and country, Donald Trump has repeatedly tried to take those as his," Donnelly said Thursday. "Those are Democrat values as well. We need to talk about them."

Donnelly said the party needs to reach out to large swaths rural voters, especially in rust-belt states like Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan, that were critical to Trump's victory.

Data points to Democrats' need to change course on rural voters

The new organization's analysis of election data suggests that, if Democrats don't alter their course, they will continue to win a greater share of the popular vote, but without gaining ground in the Electoral College. That's because the gains will come from large urban areas in states Democrats already reliably win, Donnelly said.

"With all due respect to California, if we win that state by a few more points, it doesn’t change anything," he said. "The extrapolation we’ve done on the data is that the popular vote margin will likely continue to increase for the Democratic Party, while the electoral votes barely budge."

That gap has led many Democratic presidential hopefuls — including South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg — to call for abolishing the Electoral College system.

"We can’t say it’s much of a democracy when twice in my lifetime the Electoral College has overruled the American people," Buttigieg said during his official presidential campaign announcement last week, referring to the elections of Trump in 2016 and George W. Bush in 2000. Both men won even though their Democratic opponents received more votes nationwide.

'Focus has to be winning the Electoral College'

Donnelly acknowledged that ditching the Electoral College is an idea that has gained traction within his party, but he emphasized that it's not going to happen before the 2020 presidential election.

"My focus is on the here and now," he said. "Our focus has to be winning the Electoral College."

The new initiative will be funded with Heitkamp's leftover campaign funds and new fundraising efforts. One Country plans to hold campaign boot camps and share data with presidential hopefuls and incumbent Democrats in the Senate, Donnelly said.

Donnelly defended himself and Heitkamp as the right messengers for such an initiative. Although neither won re-election in their own largely rural states, both fared far better than Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton did two years earlier.

"Trump won our state by 19 (percentage points)," Donnelly said. "I lost by 5. We went uphill about 14 points. I wasn’t able to catch the last few. Sen. Heitkamp very similar. We traditionally always ran into double digits ahead of our national party."

Ultimately, that wasn't enough in South Dakota and Indiana. The confirmation battle over Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Trump's relentless focus on immigrant caravans during repeated campaign stops proved too much to overcome.

But in other states where Trump's margin of victory was much smaller, more attention to rural voters could have a big impact, Donnelly said. Trump won Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin by less than a percentage point. Inroads among rural voters in those states could be a game changer.

But that won't happen unless Democrats rebuild trust with those voters. And that means showing up, Donnelly said, as he did in all 92 of Indiana's counties each year.

"People don’t care how much you know if they don’t know how much you care," he said. "Rule No. 1 is you have to be there and for people to look you in the eye. That kind of effort can make a huge difference."

Contact IndyStar reporter Tony Cook at 317-444-6081 or tony.cook@indystar.com. Follow him on Facebook or Twitter: @IndyStarTony.