Will voters in struggling Midwest communities decide the election again?

There is no shortage of factors that may yet determine the 2020 presidential election, including the president's health, the successful counting of mail-in ballots and related motivations and turnout numbers for Donald Trump and Joe Biden voters in battleground states such as Wisconsin. Pennsylvania and Michigan. But it may also depend on the very same factor that played out in the 2016 election: the attitudes of working-class whites in and around the once-powerful, now-hollow industrial communities in the same battleground states. In 2016, in key Midwest battleground states, these voters joined with conservatives in the rural hinterland to put Donald Trump in the White House – turning US politics inside out.

After the 2016 election, I analyzed the interaction between economic stress, cultural stress, and voting behavior. For many residents of areas in economic transition—specifically Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan—concerns about an economic future for themselves and their children interacted with a perceived loss of identity, status, and control in a more diverse society with changing cultural norms. . This dynamic combined a toxic mix of discontent, along with a longing for a return to a more recognizable era. This nostalgia and anger became fertile ground for Trump's call to bring back the jobs and industries of the past (Steel! Coal! Manufacturing!) and to blame “others” like immigrants for the loss of status and control.

Last year, Brookings Metro assessed the conditions and prospects of a set of 141 small and medium-sized “legacy” communities—older metro industrial areas that share a manufacturing-based heritage. Some of these communities (the most numerous throughout the Midwest), managed to shed their industrial skin and find new economic diversification and market in a changed economy. But many continue to struggle.

In my home state of Michigan, there are many historic Democratic strongholds among these legacy communities that have changed or nearly changed from supporting Barack Obama in 2012 to Trump in 2016. These include once-thriving mid-sized manufacturing centers like General Motors, the cities of Flint and Saginaw, as well as Monroe, home of Monroe Shocks and La-Z-Boy. All three have lost their financial anchors and remain adrift. On the other hand, communities that did better economically remained blue in 2016, including former manufacturing centers like Kalamazoo, which — despite the loss of longtime industries — had managed to reorient its economy.

The same pattern was seen in the 2018 midterm elections, when a number of historically Republican and even Trump-voting counties turned blue. These were communities that were relatively prosperous or that had successfully recovered. Communities that continued to struggle remained red.

The Economic Innovation Group (EIG) recently launched a report which identified (using different metrics than Brookings) a total of 232 legacy counties across the country that were in long-term decline. These are non-rural city-areas defined by steady population decline, declining incomes, and housing abandonment rates higher than the national average.

Of the EIG designated legacy counties, the largest number (85) are in the Midwest. This is not surprising, given that during the 20^u century, the region had developed the densest concentration of small and medium-sized food production and processing centers. Of these Midwest heritage counties, 18 are in Michigan, five in Wisconsin, and 23 in Pennsylvania.

In Michigan, the majority of these counties were once Democratic strongholds — home to white and black blue-collar workers, often unionized. These same workers have seen a steady disappearance of jobs and young people from their communities and a slow decline of their once sparkling and bustling cities.

As shown in the table below, in the 2012 presidential election, nine of Michigan's 18 legacy counties voted for Barack Obama. In 2016, only two of them voted for Hillary Clinton. those who voted for Trump responded to his plays on economic nostalgia and resentment toward immigrants, people of color, urban elites, and globalization.

Source: Election results from the New York Times

Note: Composite scores were calculated for Bay, Saginaw, Tuscola and Wayne counties, which include multiple congressional districts

The Cook Partisan Voter Index for 2020, which uses the last two elections to measure party trends, reports that of Michigan's 18 legacy counties, three remain Democratic, including Wayne County (home of Detroit) and Genesee County (home of Flint). Others are firmly in Republican hands, often by wide margins. The story is similar in Pennsylvania, where all but one of the 23 legacy counties are Republican. Among Wisconsin's five legacy counties, only Milwaukee remains Democratic.

Given long-term population decline and youth flight, heritage communities tend to be larger. In Michigan, all but one have median populations older than the state median age of 39.9 years. In Pennsylvania, 22 of the 23 legacy counties are either close to or well above the state median age of 40.8 (only Philadelphia is below). And in Wisconsin, Milwaukee is the only legacy county younger than the state median age of 39.9.

In demographic terms, legacy counties tend to be “whiter” than state averages, but there are still many that have large minority populations. In Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, five legacy counties are at or above statewide rates of minority citizens. In Michigan, two legacy counties have higher shares of nonwhite residents than the state as a whole, which is 20.8% nonwhite.

What will these communities and their voters decide this November? The pandemic-induced recession has hit Michigan and other manufacturing regions harder than most, with more jobs being lost, businesses closing and workers being driven away by automation. That may fuel more anger and resentment in “Trump country,” but those voters are unlikely to take that frustration out on the president himself. Instead, communities that continue to falter are likely to double down on Trumpism. While the President rejects responsibility for the further deterioration of the Midwest economy, trade wars and COVID-19, encourages his supporters to do so blame Democratic governors like Michigan's Gretchen Whitmer on the economic shutdown.

All signs are that anti-Trump and pro-Biden voters are very excited to get to the polls, and it's very likely that a higher turnout for the Democrat will carry the day. But when you consider that Trump won Michigan by just 12,000 votes (and not much more in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania), the passions stirred by Trump's nationalist, nativist appeals to legacy communities still struggling may play out again. key role on November 3.

Jack Farrell contributed to this post.