Strong Support Here Helped Trump Win Pennsylvania in 2016. 2020 Could Be Different.
'ALTOONA, Pa. — President Trump’s road to re-election runs through places like Altoona, with its deep working-class roots, conservative social values and nearly all-white population. But it is not a straight line.
He won about 70 percent of the vote in Blair County, where Altoona is the largest city, in 2016, and that support was an integral part of why Mr. Trump defied forecasts and carried Pennsylvania, a state that will again be critical to his chances in 2020, by about 44,000 votes.
Altoona’s voters have now had more than two years to assess whether Mr. Trump has honored his campaign commitments and whether they will support him again so enthusiastically. Their answer, judging from interviews with more than two dozen voters, is complicated, not the black and white narrative that either Mr. Trump’s supporters or his critics might assume.
Most of his supporters say they will stick with him, citing his blunt style, which some of them see as a form of entertainment, as well as a strong economy. But not all of them.
That same economy has yielded uneven results in Altoona, a city of about 45,000 where the low unemployment rate of 4.2 percent masks some uglier economic facts: Most of the new jobs are in lower-paying service industries, with scaled-down benefits. The poverty rate is 23.2 percent. And there are few signs of the renaissance in manufacturing that the president said he would create.
“There is not a lot of disposable income at $11 an hour,” said Jim Foreman, the county Republican chairman, who operates several physical therapy clinics.
Robert K. Kutz, the president of a local labor council, put it more bluntly. He said some union members who voted for Mr. Trump were starting “to realize that the promises came up empty” and will vote against him in 2020.
“As far as the manufacturing goes,” he added, “none of that has come back.”
Mr. Foreman also acknowledged that it would be difficult for Mr. Trump to replicate his overwhelming numbers from 2016. And if the numbers fall off in rural counties like his, Mr. Trump’s path to winning a state where Democrats picked up three House seats in the midterm elections becomes more challenging.'>>>
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/24/us/politics/trump-pennsylvania.html?
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If they don't see it by now, they never will. But there are a lot more voters in Pennsylvania than just the union members. We're quite diverse here, with a stable older population, and we still have lots of room for growth.
