“I try to avoid it because it gets angry and nasty,” said Susan Miller, 42, a waitress at Compton’s Pancake House in Stroudsburg, who said she had voted once in her life, for Barack Obama in 2008.
One predictor of political engagement is growing up in a family that talked about politics. Ms. Miller did not. And she is so sick of the one person in her life who is loudly insisting that she vote — an aunt who supports Mr. Trump — that she has started simply pretending that she will.
Like many people interviewed for this article, Ms. Miller was scrambling to pay rent and buy groceries. Monroe County’s unemployment rate stood at around 13 percent in August, as the pandemic bit into the county’s tourism industry. Her tips have fallen by half and she is now working for Instacart to make up the difference. Two close relatives have died of Covid-19.
“Politics? It’s the least of my worries,” she said.
