Voices from Democratic Counties Where Trump Won Large

By ELIZABETH DIAS, HALEY SWEETLAND EDWARDS AND KARL VICK

Amid Donald Trump'southward supporters, the real estate mogul's victory was alike to a revolution, a mandate delivered en masse by working form voters sidelined in the mod economic system.

"On Election Night, I couldn't believe information technology was happening. I was upwards late watching every state go Trump and I was baffled," said Sue Stavish-O'Boyle, a long-time Democrat from Forty Fort, Pennsylvania who voted enthusiastically for Trump. "I thought, wow, I tin't believe information technology! The little people have a vocalisation!"

In that location was a lot of that. Trump's victory was no less shocking to the 65.3 one thousand thousand who voted for Hillary Clinton. And the trouble was non just that pollsters and pundits failed to foresee that former Democrats like Stavish-O'Boyle in the Rust Chugalug would flip to Trump. It was that many Clinton supporters just didn't know anyone personally voted for the man. And vice versa. The country is not just divided, information technology is separated. For decades, researchers pointed out that shifting demographics—including the tendency among those with advanced degrees to movement away from where they grew upwardly—our communities have grown more ideologically homogenous. More than and more, we alive among people who vote like we do. According to the most recent ballot data, almost one-half of us—48%—reside in what's known equally "landslide county," where 60% or more of the population votes for the aforementioned candidate. In 1976, that number was 27%, according to Bill Bishop and Robert Cushing, the authors of the 2008 volume, The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Similar-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart.

This kind of ideological segregation gives rising to the kind of comedic, if perhaps apocryphal, remark by New Yorker author Pauline Kael after the 1972 election: "I can't believe Nixon won. I don't know anyone who voted for him." You heard the same from Londoners after the Brexit vote, which was carried by the countryside. The cocky-sorting makes common ground harder to notice — Clinton dismissing Trump's base as a "basket of deplorables," for example — and caricature and tribalism to creep into a pluralistic republic. The risk is seeing fellow Americans as The Other.

To add texture to demographic generalities—non-college educated whites versus minorities, rural versus urban—Fourth dimension sent three correspondents to five counties scattered beyond Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. They looked at counties that had voted for President Obama in 2008 and 2012 and flipped for Trump in 2016, but the individuals interviewed were met at random: A correctional officer waiting at an auto body shop; a immature women off to pick up her kids at the schoolhouse bus; a guy operating a table saw in his front end thousand.

The result is a pastiche of American voices. Some were incorporated in Time's special Dec. 19 issue. Others are sampled here, a handful of real Americans, Democrats and Republicans alike, who cast a vote for the candidate who, in victory, became Time's Person of the Year for 2016.

Naomi Hines, 26, Owosso, Mich.

Naomi Hines, 26, Owosso, Mich. A baker at Meijer, Hines is a member of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 951, which endorsed Clinton.
Lise Sarfati for TIME

A baker at a Meijer grocery store, Hines is a local member of the United Food and Commercial Workers Marriage Local 951, which endorsed Clinton. Only instead of following the spousal relationship'south lead, Hines put Trump/Pence decals on her car—and when her mother, a Democrat, peeled them off in protest, put twice equally many dorsum on. "You weren't brought into this world to rely on Ms. Suzy downward the street to pay for yous," she says of her vote for Trump. "That was what my grandad instilled in me, and he was a Democrat."

Hines has decided to join the Shiawassee GOP executive committee to exist involved in the Republican future, for herself and her 2-yr-old son. Of all Trump's proposals, she says, the wall along the U.S.'s border with Mexico is the least appealing. "But let'southward secure the border," she adds. "Yes lets still help others, merely lets take care of domicile starting time."

Ron Seippel, 57, Beetown, WI

"This is a rebellious part of the state, equally they say in Madison," says the farmer, of Wisconsin'due south hilly southwest. "They always refer to Madison as 56 square miles of fantasy surrounded by reality."

Seippel says he suffered through the presidential derby. "I voted Democrat for the last 25 years, but I voted for Trump," he reports. The ballot was cast "more against her, because I would accept voted for somebody less liberal." He names Jim Webb, the former Marine and U.Southward. Senator from Virginia, as an acceptable Democrat. "I'd have voted for him in a heartbeat."

"If she'd been more moderate she would've won," Seippel says, at the bar of the Yesterdaze tavern, where the locals are preparing for the first day of deer season. "Like the edge. People want that edge secured. Working people practice."

Shannon Goodin, 24, Owosso, Mich.

Shannon Goodin, 24, Owosso, Mich.Trump earned the support of Goodin, a first-time voter, by being
Lise Sarfati for TIME

A beginning-time voter who doesn't consider herself a Democrat or a Republican, Goodin says Obama was "really likable" only Trump earned her support by being "a big poster child for change." "Politicians don't appeal to us," Goodin says of why Trump earned her trust. "Clinton would go out of her style to appeal to minorities, immigrants, simply she didn't really for everyday Americans."

A hairstylist, Goodin recalls ane day when two clients pulled their business organisation afterward she posted online that she hoped Michigan would turn red. Just supporting Trump is about jobs and the economy, not social issues. With whatever change, she says, "it is normal to exist a little scared, but I'thousand excited."

Moses Sam, 25, Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania

With tattoos and the kind of thick-framed spectacles that would laissez passer muster in Brooklyn, Sam doesn't fit the typical Trump supporter stereotype. Like many Americans, his heritage is a grab bag—he'due south got Lebanese-Coptic, Italian, Puerto Rican, and Portuguese roots—simply he rejects what he sees equally exclusionary identity politics. "I'm just an American," he says.

Sam, who pieces together full-fourth dimension work as a bouncer at a nightclub and waiter at an upscale chophouse, says the Democratic Party no longer represents working Americans like him. "Urban liberals and social justice warriors and the media all began pandering to subsets of people," he says. That doesn't mean he's narrow-minded, racist or close-minded, he says, noting that his adoptive brother is gay. "I don't have any problem with anything like that. Everyone's just people," he says. "I just don't remember it helps anything when we retrieve of ourselves as different." Sam, who sold drugs, has a felony record and is currently on probation, says his politics are based in the belief that "liberty survives better in a capitalist, nationalist authorities," he says. "That'south Trump."

Casey Voss, 36, Owosso, Mich.

Casey Voss, 35, and daughter Sidney, 16, Owosso, Mich.A beauty-salon owner, Casey voted for Trump because he promised change, the same reason she voted for Barack Obama in 2008.
Lise Sarfati for Fourth dimension

When Voss was 19, she started her own hair salon with her best friend. "It makes me really sad how we define the people who sympathize the changing in the nation are those went to college and brand a sure amount of money and expect a certain style, because America is the melting pot of all people," she says. "I got where I am today considering of the idea that anything is possible, that yous can be a girl who barely made it through high schoolhouse and you can own your dream business."

Now, the mother of three and small-scale business owner says the change she wanted when she voted for Obama in 2008 is what she hopes Trump will bring. "I'm scared near every dollar that comes into my business. I'g scared about what that ways in Obamacare, in taxes," she says. "Every single thing happening to me is out of my command."

Voss keeps a pic of Jesus at her station. Trump is not America's savior, she says, but she is hopeful for the future. "Just similar in marriage or in a business organisation partnership, I made a pick," she says. "He's going to fight so much harder at present that everyone is against him."

Ashlyn Boyd 22, Perry, Mich.

A lot of Boyd's friends don't know she voted for Trump. Most supported Clinton, she says. But Boyd, who went to cosmetology schoolhouse during high school, had other concerns. Obamacare looked good on paper but was unaffordable for her family unit. Her 3-twelvemonth-old son will soon be in school, and she opposes Mutual Cadre. She thinks Trump's thought of term limits is an "amazing thing," and she likes the idea of tariffs on companies in America that transport out their products for cheaper labor. "I don't think all people who voted for Hillary are liberal snobs. I am 100% for gay spousal relationship. That is non why I voted for Trump," she says. And, she adds, "it is awesome that a woman successfully ran Trump's entrada."

Darryl Wimbley, 48, Saginaw, Mich.

Darryl Wimbley, 48, Saginaw, Mich.After two decades as a car salesman, Wimbley hopes to franchise his hotdog­ stand business. This year was the first time he voted for a Republican president over a Democrat. "America is a business. It is not a soup kitchen," he says. "I have made a lot of money for other people. It is time I make it for myself."
Lise Sarfati for TIME

After ii decades as a car salesman, Wimbley hopes he will presently be able to franchise his hot dog stand up business. This yr was the first time he voted for a Republican for the White House. Looking back, he thinks his 2008 vote for Obama was "the most racist thing I ever did, I voted for him simply because he was black," he says. "America is a business, information technology is not a soup kitchen," he says, explaining his back up for Trump. "I have made a lot of money for other people. It is fourth dimension I make it for myself."

Wimbley says his decision has come with a high cost from other black members of his community. "I'm dubbed a 'coon,' an 'Uncle Tom,' I should be killed, my babies should be killed," he says. "These are people who say they are social justice warriors. They are saying the Constitution only applies to them."

Brittany Bucholtz, 26, Dallas, Pennsylvania

The certified nursing assistant and mother of ii is usually too busy for politics: 2016 is the first time she showed upward to vote. What got her to the polls this time effectually, she says, is partly her disappointment with President Obama, whose message she liked in 2008. "He was all for the working course, only when he got in, it was all for the upper form," she says. She's besides disappointed with where she sees the country going. "There'southward no more than middle class," she says, "There's poor or there's rich and there'south nothing in betwixt." Of all the women she works with, only one supported Hillary Clinton, she says. All the rest of united states of america were Trump supporters. "He'south the one who'south speaking to united states," she said. "He would come and do these rallies or you'd hear him on TV and he'd simply say all the things we wanted to say."

Kim Woodrosky, 53, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania

As the daughter of a Teamster and a textile mill worker, Woodrosky always thought of her membership in the Democratic Party "as a birthright."
Lise Sarfati for Fourth dimension

"Going way dorsum when, if yous were in a union, if you were a working course person, you lot were a Democrat," says the real estate investor, whose father was a Teamster and whose mother worked in a material mill. "That'southward just the way the ball fell." But in 2016, Woodrosky says she couldn't "bring herself" to vote for Clinton, who she saw every bit compromised and untrustworthy—fifty-fifty if it meant foregoing an opportunity to shatter a glass ceiling. "I want a woman president. I desire to run across a woman president. I'm a woman. Why wouldn't I?" she says. " Only she was not the i I wanted to see."

"Honestly, the one affair she said that stuck in my head was, 'If you were happy with the terminal eight years, vote for me and we'll keep that,'" Woodrosky said, and then laughed out loud. "Well, I wasn't happy with the last eight years, so she was also telling her non to vote for her!"

Sandy Lewis, 56, Swoyersville, PA

A cocky-described "life-long Democrat," Lewis works at the county welfare office and fiercely defends those who find themselves with no other choice but to depend on food stamps and land housing assistance. Recently, she started learning sign linguistic communication with an eye toward helping people who are deafened access what they need in the community. Lewis' son, Tom Back-scratch, who died of cancer in 2007, was the president and founder of the Luzerne County Young Democrats and represented his neighbors in the state's Democratic Party.

Lewis voted for Trump in Nov in role because she couldn't bring herself to cast a vote for Clinton and in function because she believed the New York businessman is the best option to "shake up" Washington. "I was raised a Democrat, pure Democrat. I'chiliad still a Democrat," she says, earlier pausing to collect her thoughts. "Do I experience like a traitor? A little bit. But you lot know, if my son was here he would say, 'Mom, you did the right thing.'"

Brandon DeFrain, 33, Pinconning, MI

DeFrain, the chairman of the Bay Canton Republican Party, is an operations manager for Domicile Depot. When teachers and union workers started asking him for Trump signs, he knew Trump would flip the canton Obama won twice. "We were bachelor, nosotros listened to people," he says of his team'south efforts. "Obama had the opportunity to exist the greatest president in the history of the globe. I don't recollect he did a good job uniting the country on day 1….We wanted a change from the modify."

Trump's concern losses and ability to recover besides only made him a more than appealing candidate for a county that witnessed immediate its economic system collapse below it. "He's always admitted failing," DeFrain says. "He knows the right people to go on us moving forrad." That's something he thinks the media coverage missed. "It hurt your feelings every time you turned the television set on," he says. "Were they actually gauging how we felt?"

Sara Vasquez, 27, Saginaw, Mich.

Sara Vasquez, 27, Saginaw, Mich.A student who works part-time in retail, Vasquez sees her grandfather as a role model.
Lise Sarfati for TIME

Vasquez, a political scientific discipline college student who works part fourth dimension at Burlington Coat Manufacturing plant, supported John Kasich in the primaries, but then knocked doors for Trump in the general. Earlier in her life, she worked two or iii jobs and for a time relied on food stamps. She remembers her function model, her grandfather who left Mexico to work in Midwestern strawberry fields and died a U.S. denizen who she says owned a million dollar home and his own business. "I'm all for clearing if it is done legally, and for people wanting to live the American dream, like my grandfather did," she says.

"For things like abortion and gay marriage, fifty-fifty though I consider myself Republican, I think more along the lines of, that's who you are," she adds. "I take a cousin who has had three abortions, and gay marriage became legal on my birthday, and I was just as ecstatic about information technology equally anybody else."

Sue Stavish-O'Boyle, l, Forty Fort, PA

The licensing specialist at the Mohegan Sun Casino was a Democrat up until January 2016 when she switched her party registration and voted for a Republican in a presidential election for the first time in her life. For her, the decision was clear. She wasn't simply voting confronting Clinton; she was voting for Trump. "I liked that he wasn't involved in Washington, he wasn't a politico. I liked that he was shooting from the hip. I felt similar he was going to champion the mutual people even though he'due south a billionaire—I get that. But he's not part of the hierarchy. He doesn't owe anyone anything," she says. Stavish-O'Boyle, who describes herself as a conservative Democrat, is both pro-gay union and pro-life, and feels no kinship with "radicals" on either ends of the ideological spectrum. "I recollect in that location's a lot of usa out here," she says, "who experience the way I do."

Thomas and Erica McTague, 38 and 33, Plymouth, PA

Thomas and Erica McTague, 38 and 33, Plymouth, PA.Thomas, a police officer, and Erica, a hairstylist, voted largely on economic issues. "Go back 60, 70 years and this area had industry and people had good jobs," he says. "When Trump talked about getting rid of all this free-trade stuff, he brought to life the way this country should be going."
Lise Sarfati for TIME

Thomas, a police officer, and Erica, a hairstylist, appreciated Trump'due south stance on law enforcement and clearing, but voted largely on economical problems, similar unemployment, underemployment and gratis trade. That many in their community can't discover reliable jobs that pay enough money support a family is a huge business organization. "Go back 60, 70 years and this surface area had industry and people had good jobs," he says. "When Trump talked virtually getting rid of all this free-trade stuff, he brought to life the fashion this land should be going."

David Digman, 69, Mt. Hope, WI

A dairy farmer and raconteur, Digman was finishing tiffin at Ma's Bakery and opining on the election fifty-fifty before a reporter made himself known. A newscaster that morning had mentioned Trump's reliance on "less educated, lower-income, rural voters" and Digman began loudly addressing his lunch companions by that description: "Hank, you're less educated, lower-income and rural, what practice you think?" Digman voted Trump only sees his ample flaws. "I thought he had no chance in hell," he says. "Sometimes in the debates he was similar a 12-year-old. Come up upward there and box his ears, you know."

Simply the farmer — "I figure myself as a middle course redneck" — and the billionaire share much, including an airy arroyo to international affairs. "Get Russian federation to nuke Communist china," Digman says. "That'll take intendance of our debt! I was thinkin' almost that 1 twenty-four hour period while I was milkin."' He paused and observed. to no one in particular: "I'd love to become Russia to hunt."

Similar many in southwestern Wisconsin, Digman is selling his subcontract, every bit the economies of scale bulldoze consolidation across the Dairy State. Also like many, he employs a Mexican equally a regular farm hand, and an Amish for odd jobs — they're fantabulous workers, and will take less than young locals. "My Mexican workin' for me, he said, 'You lot tin't vote for Trump. He'due south gonna send us all back.' I said, He'll never find you here in Mt. Promise." The worker, he says, is "illegal equally can be," which doesn't bother Digman in the specific, simply does in the general. "Oh, we gotta accept these Mexicans here," he says, "merely we gotta have 'em legally."

Joseph Dougherty, 49, Nanticoke, PA

Joseph Dougherty, 49, Nanticoke, PA. A lifelong Democrat and former mayor of his small town, Dougherty became a Republican to vote in the primary for Trump.
Lise Sarfati for TIME

A lifelong Democrat, the quondam mayor of Nanticoke became a Republican this year to vote for Trump, who he sees as more than representative of "hard-working, blue neckband workers looking for family-sustaining jobs." To Dougherty, the trouble lies in part with the Democratic Party, who he believes sidelined their cadre constituency in the Rust Belt states. "We didn't leave the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party left usa," he says.

Dougherty says statistics showing an improving economy aren't reflected in his community, where people are working harder and harder but "getting more and more taken out of their paycheck every month." "We don't desire to just survive," he said. "People are tired of surviving. People desire to go on vacation, better their home, get a better auto, invest in their children's futurity."

Chris Wilson contributed reporting.