Trumbull County, Ohio, shifted 30 points to vote Trump. That didn't save its car plant.
By Philip Bump November 26 at 1:17 PM
The story of the 2016 presidential election, to some extent, can be told by what happened in Trumbull County, Ohio.
In 2012, the state voted narrowly for Barack Obama. When Ohio was called for Obama on election night, his reelection was all but ensured. But four years later, the state backed Republican Donald Trump by eight points. That was in part because of shifts in places such as Trumbull, a perfectly square county near Youngstown. Obama won Trumbull by 23 points. Trump won it by more than six.
Why? In part because Trump’s pitch was tailored very specifically to places like Trumbull County.
On Monday, General Motors announced that it was shuttering the Lordstown plant, along with others in Ontario, Maryland and Michigan, by the end of next year. Trump flipped Macomb County, Mich. — one of those Midwestern counties that was seen as a bellwether for Trump’s pitch on the economy in 2016 — from blue to red. GM will stop production at its plant there next year, as well.
“People of the Mahoning Valley, and of Ohio and the Midwest — we have to talk about Macomb County, as well — voted for Donald Trump because I think they saw someone who was going to put their money where their mouth was on issues of trade and leveling the playing field for working men and women,” she said.
Cafaro compared the GM move to Trump’s late 2016 push to keep the Carrier corporation from moving jobs out of Indiana. It worked — for a short time.
“They may not blame Trump for it closing specifically,” she added, “but they will blame him for not saving it.” Blame him in the 2020 election, that is.
How important could that be? Trump won Michigan by fewer than 11,000 votes. In Macomb County, which Obama won by 16,000 votes, Trump’s margin was nearly 50,000 — more than four times his margin statewide.
GM’s stock soared after the announcement of the planned closures.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2018/11/26/trumbull-county-ohio-shifted-points-vote-trump-it-didnt-save-its-car-plant/
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