“Being middle class is the worst to be,” said Courtney Miller, 23, a sheriff’s corrections officer, leaving a Trump rally Saturday at a gun store in McDonough, Ga. “You’re not low enough to get anything” in government assistance, she said, “but you’re not high enough to have what you need.”

Her friend Sam Britt, 24, a welder, complains about demands from Democrats for free college tuition and the rising reliance on social programs for the poor. “Everyone wants to go to college and sit behind a computer — America’s not built on that,” he said.

At the same time, he does not have a knee-jerk opposition to government spending, particularly when it comes to salaries for people like Miller. “Government jobs are not paying enough,” he said. “You work 40 hours a week and you’re barely scraping by.”

Some demographers and pollsters refer to people like these as “big government Republicans.” Though the people themselves would bristle at such a label, it sums up their support for government spending, so long as the money is directed at those they deem to be deserving.