If you are a longtime resident of Pennsylvania, it still is a bit of a jolt to the senses to drive through what was once coal country and see an oversized, cheery, red billboard sitting along U.S. 30 reading “VOTE REPUBLICAN.”

However, it is a reminder of how much the people who live in these old industrial and coal-rich counties have shed the local Democratic politics of their upbringing. Voter registration numbers, as we shall see, show as much.

Important to note: These voters have not changed personally, but their parties have done so. Democrats have abandoned their working-class voters for college-educated elites who rarely call the middle of somewhere home.

Officials in both parties in Washington — whether they are lawmakers on Capitol Hill or strategists working for one of the alphabet soup campaign arms of the House, Senate, or state legislatures, or a staffer for any of them — often struggle with how to appeal to these citizens.