Donald Trump's appeal to Rust Belt workers

Michael Korns, chairman of the Republican committee here in Westmoreland County, is confident that Mr. Trump can win Pennsylvania, where Mr. Obama defeated Mitt Romney in 2012 by a margin of 310,000 votes, 52 percent to 46.6 percent.

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“Many voters feel that the Democratic Party, which they had supported for generations, has largely abandoned blue-collar workers,” Mr. Korns said. “There’s also increasingly a feeling that the Republican Party has abandoned them as well, that neither party has much interest in the day-to-day economics of working people. And then when Trump came in, he spoke to them, he grabbed them.”

G. Terry Madonna, a professor of public affairs at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, said Mr. Trump might do considerably better than Mr. Romney, who lost every Rust Belt state except Indiana.

“It’s a combination of the frustration that a lot of Americans feel — white, blue-collar workers who believe the economy is passing them by, that there’s still a recession, that wages haven’t kept pace,” Mr. Madonna said. “There’s all this frustration, and then a master showman shows up who says he’ll stick it to the establishment.”

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