Voters in blue-collar suburban counties like Lake County, Ohio, and others in the Great Lakes region supported President Donald Trump in 2016. Now, some of those voters are shifting their support away from electing Trump for a second term, according to The Wall Street Journal.
According to polling in counties that helped Trump secure the win in 2016, the president is losing some support.
Longtime GOP voter Erin Marrott told The Journal she is backing Biden this year. The nurse practitioner who lives in a suburban county said she doesn’t approve of Trump’s coronavirus response.
“I always believed that any candidate — red or blue — would rise up to meet the challenges of a public health crisis. Even in 2016, I thought Trump could handle a crisis like this, but obviously, he can’t,” she said. “President Trump has done good things: The stock market is up and unemployment was down before the pandemic. But I cannot vote for someone who is supposed to be a role model and doesn’t rise to the occasion.”
Trump took counties dubbed by George Washington University’s American Communities Project as “Middle Suburbs” by 13 percentage points. In 2012, GOP candidate Mitt Romney only won those areas by 2 percentage points.
According to Wall Street Journal/NBC News polling, Trump only has a 1-point lead over Biden in those Middle Suburb counties in 2020.
But some Republicans in the Lake County, Ohio area say they think Trump will win again.
Dale Fellows, chairman of the Lake County Republican Party, told the Journal he sees plenty of Trump supporters.
But others say they are worried the president’s support is dropping. Lake County Commissioner Jerry Cirino, a Republican who is running to serve in the Ohio state Senate, said some voters have told him they won’t vote for Trump this time around.
“When I knock on a door and someone tells me they don’t like him or they’re not going to vote for him, 90% of the time it’s about stylistic things,” he said. “They’re certainly not the hardcore supporters, but they’re definitely people who have voted for him, who voted for him last time by all appearances.”
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