What Pennsylvania taught me about Donald Trump voters
Donald Trump is often seen in the presence of devoted fans, but some of his supporters are more reluctant.
If you've ever watched a clip of a Donald Trump rally and paid attention to the crowd behind him, you might think you know what a typical Trump voter looks like.
White. Male. Head-to-toe in MAGA merch. And enthusiastically cheering at every angry Trumpism, no matter how offensive, discriminatory or mean.
But away from the rallies and the MAGA cult fandom, here's something that might surprise you: a lot of Trump voters say they wish he'd watch his mouth.
"You might not like him personally, and he has some quirks, I totally agree," Mary Senuta, a member of a Pennsylvania Republican women's group, told me.
"But I'm voting on policy, not personality.
"We've had four years [since Trump's presidency] and if you ask someone, 'Were you better off four years ago than you are today,' if they say no, they're lying."
Mary Senuta is part of a Republican women group in Pennsylvania's Westmoreland County.
By the time I had this chat with Mary, at a casino outside Pittsburgh on election night, I'd heard this same thing over and over.
In the days and weeks leading up to the election, I'd spent a lot of time talking to Trump voters, particularly in battleground Pennsylvania.
I spoke to people queuing for his rallies, people doorknocking homes to campaign, and people at volunteer centres, polling stations and election-evening events. I even knocked on the doors of houses that were dressed up in Trump paraphernalia, trying to fully understand the mindsets and motivations of his Pennsylvania supporters.
Many of them are indeed superfans. This group of MAGA diehards love the way he rails against political correctness, trash talks "elites", and fights the culture wars. Some are racist and misogynistic.
But, as the demographic data from exit polls shows, a lot of Trump voters don't match the stereotype, and were keen to point out they knew he had his problems.
In the swing county of Erie, retired corrections officer Brian Shank went to great lengths to help get Trump elected.
Brian Shank used his "Trump trailer" to help sign people up to vote.
He built a "Trump trailer" with a homemade lookalike mannequin, and parked it by the public dock, where he helped people sign up to vote. Still, he admitted, he had reservations.
"Is he an angel? No," Brian said. "Does he do crazy things I don't agree with? Absolutely. But he gets the job done."
Sticker shock in the rust belt
Less than an hour's drive south-east of Pittsburgh is a place once known as "Glass City".
Its real name is Jeannette – named after the wife of one of the glassmakers who drove the town's boom last century.
At Jeannette's peak, seven glass factories employed thousands. Now, they've all closed.
The population's halved to below 10,000, and a quarter of the town lives in poverty.
Jeannette, Pennsylvania, was once home to seven glass factories. Now there are none.
When I asked a polling station volunteer, a well-presented woman of the Boomer generation, if Jeannette was a good place to live, she looked at me like it might be a trick question.
"Well," she said, "I think if you asked a lot of people, it still has a bit of a bad reputation. We've had our problems, you know, with drugs and things."
In a place like this, a lot of voters are thinking about one thing only.
"Groceries, gas, you name it, all of our utilities have gone up," Jeannette resident Jen Galbraith said. "It's just insane, the price increases over the past few years."
It was enough to get Jen out to vote for Trump in her first ever presidential election.
Jen Galbraith said "insane" living costs motivated her to vote for the first time.
Asked for her views on Kamala Harris, she said she felt indifferent. "It's just the fact she's been in office for four years," she said. "Her and Biden have done nothing to help the economy. And when Trump was in office, we flourished."
According to CNN's exit poll, 83 per cent of Trump voters in Pennsylvania felt their family's financial situation was worse today than four years ago, and 91 per cent said the economy was in poor shape.
Even in affluent neighbourhoods in Pittsburgh, I heard similar sentiments.
During Trump's reign, people in Pennsylvania's second-largest city "watched as industry and jobs opened up", lawyer Eric Jackson Lurie told me.
"There was a point where I was driving down the street one day, and this was few years into his presidency, and I just realised every business had signs saying 'help wanted'," he said.
"I remember calling my wife, going, 'Oh my gosh, this is crazy, what this president has been able to do with this economy – like, there are jobs everywhere'."
Of course, people mentioned other issues. Immigration was a huge one. Trump-fuelled fears of an "invasion" at the Mexican border are widely held.
"It's something I'm going to worry about because I have children now," one young woman, a first-time voter, said through tears after she cast her vote for Trump.
"There's rapists, drug dealers, all these things coming over her and I'm scared for my kids."
But often, people would tie the immigration issue back to their own personal finances.
I travelled to the Pennsylvania borough of Charleroi when Trump began describing it as a place experiencing "massive crime" committed by its growing Haitian community. (Local authorities, citing crime data, say that's untrue.)
Many of Charleroi's downtown shops are now empty.
When I asked people in Charleroi how they felt about migration from Haiti, some expressed strong views. But they didn't mention crime. Instead, a lot of them took exception to the financial support given to asylum seekers, which wasn't available to citizens.
"I've worked my entire life, and they live better than me," resident Kevin Armstrong said.
But many more people in Charleroi wanted to talk about what they said was the town's real problem – the impending closure of its Pyrex plant, the last remaining glass factory, cutting hundreds of jobs.
"We're worried about the glass factory," one elderly man said after I asked about immigration. "That's the big issue right now."
'A friend saw it on Facebook'
If you speak to a Trump supporter about politics for long enough, there's a good chance they will start talking about election fraud.
For years, Trump's been pushing, without evidence, the claim that he would have won the White House in 2020 if Democrats hadn't "cheated".
In many conservative circles, that now seems to have become conventional wisdom. Trump supporters have been told not to trust the election officials, investigators and more than 60 judges who have rejected his claim.
So, many of them don't.
Some insisted on showing me social media posts or online videos to support their suspicions.
Outside a polling station on election day, one man shared his "proof" it was happening again this year.
It was a photo of, supposedly, a ballot paper with a small, black dot printed in the circle next to Kamala Harris's name.
"That dot is so the machine will count it as a vote for Kamala," he told me.
I asked him where the photo was taken.
"A friend saw it on Facebook," he said.
When I suggested it might not be genuine, he conceded that was possible. But, he said, there was so much of this "proof" online, surely some of it was real?
People cast their ballots in Jeannette, Pennsylvania on Tuesday.
Other conspiracy theories are now widely believed also.
I spent some time in south-west Pennsylvania with some canvassers who were going door to door to encourage Republicans to make a plan to vote.
One, a retired special education teacher, choked up as she told me she was doing the work for the sake of her grandchildren. "I just feel like I have a responsibility to them," she said.
She was clearly driven by good intentions; a desire to do her part to make the world a better place.
And she seemed unable to accept that not all Trump voters were the same.
She insisted that the January 6 insurrection was not the doing of Trump supporters. Rather, "plants" were behind the violence at the Capitol Building. She knew this, because she had watched "many informational videos" about it, she told me. And besides, she said, "I know Republicans, and we don't act that way. They weren't our people."
Will the people who made Trump president be heard?
For me, one of the most surprising things about Trump supporters was how willing they were to talk to me, and how generous they were with their time.
Trump never misses an opportunity to attack journalists and journalism. He popularised the term "fake news" years ago. He regularly uses it to describe critical, rather than false, reporting – and as a blanket term for the media as a whole. At one of his final rallies, he joked that he wouldn't mind if the reporters there were shot.
But if his supporters in Pennsylvania shared his disdain for the press, they did not show it.
A sign seen by the side of the road in Jeannette on election day.
I have to acknowledge that being Australian helps. In at least some cases, being a white male probably doesn't hurt either.
But I was taken aback by how many Trump voters told me they enjoyed spending time with a reporter, and how much they appreciated being interviewed and able to give their perspective.
"Thank you for doing this. It is really, really important what you do," one told me. "People probably don't tell you that enough."
In a polarised America, a lot of people have stopped talking to one another. Instead, many default to the worst assumptions about those with different politics to their own.
I sensed that at least some of the gratitude came from a desire to be seen, heard and understood.
Now their man is headed back to the White House, it'll be interesting to see if they feel they're listened to over the next four years.
By：ABC(责任编辑：admin)
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