Historians and political scientists say that framing the wins as ‘Ohio’s working class has come home’ is too simple

At its peak, the Mahoning valley was once the beating heart of the US’s steel economy – a hardscrabble, heavily unionized Democratic bastion in north-eastern Ohio. But de-industrialization, sparked by the mass closure of steel mills in the late 1970s, transformed the region.

Tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs disappeared. Populations declined. And support for Democrats slowly, but surely, faded. In 2020, Mahoning county voted for its first Republican presidential candidate – Donald Trump – in a generation.

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