In the housing projects of Pittsburgh’s Northview Heights neighbourhood, vocal enthusiasm for this presidential election can be hard to come by.
I am out with two women, Leslie Hughes and Luwaunna Adams, whom I met two years ago when we were making a video in western Pennsylvania – a perennial battleground region in the US’s closest-fought swing state. The pair are members of the service workers’ union, which represents lower-income cleaners and security personnel. They are also two of the most effective and persuasive canvassers I have encountered.
As we trudge the streets, knocking doors in the crisp autumn air, we meet a number of apathetic voters who tell the women they are not planning to cast their ballot this time around. One young man named Rashad says he cannot understand how Hillary Clinton could win the popular vote in 2016 and yet lose the election. “If ‘we the people’ chose someone, but the electoral [system] chooses someone else, what’s the point of my vote?” he asks Adams. Another woman says she finds it impossible to discern “which one is good and which one is bad” – and so has decided to sit it out.
Their disengagement is understandable – and perhaps more widespread than we understand. Polls are starting to indicate that turnout may be significantly lower than four years ago. In the era of Donald Trump, laced with disinformation and pernicious politics, parsing fact from fiction is a laborious task for anyone. And an arcane electoral college is surely enough to make many grow disillusioned.
But Hughes and Adams do not give up. They stand for 10 minutes with each voter, running through many of the ways Trump failed during his first four years and why, they say, he should not be given another chance. They talk about how their rights as unionised cleaners are on the line. Adams engages in a frank lesson about the power of voting in her home state. “Your vote does count,” she says to Rashad. “You know what time it is.”
Both are eventually won over and decide to cast their vote for Harris. Adams lets out a cheer of joy. “When you start thinking for yourself, you realise what the best choice is for you,” she tells Rashad. He agrees: “Especially in this era of brainwash. Everything is just brainwashing you to think a certain way.” He thinks about taking a break from social media.
It is a moment of clarification and a reminder of just how distorted reality has become in this election. Conversations like these may well be the only way to bring Pennsylvania, and by default the whole country, back from the brink.
* * *
As if to underline the point, my next stop is a town hall near the banks of the Ohio River with the world’s richest man. Elon Musk has decamped to Pennsylvania to help Trump win here, spending at least $75m via his organisation America Pac.
It is a different crowd to your standard Maga rally. There is a mixture of young and old. Some describe themselves as political independents. Others claim to have voted for Joe Biden last time around. As Musk fields questions, there is a bizarre, chaotic clash of conspiracy theories and requests for investment and personal advice. Of course, there is also Musk’s new (and potentially illegal) stunt: the daily $1m giveaway to a lucky signatory of his “free speech” petition.
I watch from the media pen as the audience erupts in cheers when the winner is brought down from the balcony. I think of the grotesque contrast – between the hard-working women knocking doors in Northview and the free money being given away here to help a billionaire return to the White House. It feels a little like Musk’s twisted version of The Hunger Games, the dystopian fantasy series in which a teenage girl is chosen by lottery to participate in a battle royale and ends up leading the resistance against a Capitol run by oligarchy. (Bizarrely, Musk has expressed an affinity for the resistance in many of the great sci-fi epics.)
It is worth remembering that Pittsburgh is a city built by organised labour. It is next to the site of one of the US’s most infamous strikes, which was later suppressed with state-backed violence. In 1892, workers for Andrew Carnegie’s steel company fought for fair wages and were met with armed agents from the Pinkerton National Detective Agency.
But Musk’s pronounced anti-union stance bothers few people here. Many tell me they have no idea what his position is at all. The billionaire says he “disagree[s] with the idea of unions” because they “naturally try to create negativity in a company”; he is in federal court pursuing litigation that could gut national labour law established during the New Deal in the 1930s. Musk is, of course, not a member of the resistance, but neither is he a robber baron. He is, in fact, more powerful and wealthy than Carnegie could ever have believed possible. Who needs the Pinkertons when you already own the world’s largest disinformation platform?
* * *
About 20 miles from the city is the small borough of Charleroi, which is set into the steep slopes of the Mon Valley region. It is one of the towns that Trump has singled out recently due to the arrival of Haitian immigrants, which he claims falsely has led to bankruptcy and an increase in crime. Many of Charleroi’s community leaders refute Trump’s presentation and point me instead to a real crisis here: the impending closure of a glassware factory that has operated for 132 years. Hundreds of jobs are on the line after the manufacturer, Pyrex, was effectively bought out by a private equity group.
I arrive at a shift turnaround. Some people are receiving their termination notices, clocking off through the turnstiles and into the open parking lot. The first round of layoffs are to begin in December and spirits are understandably drab. I meet Heather Roberts, the president of the plant’s union. She has worked here for 18 years and stands next to her aunt, April Sethman, who has been here for more than two decades. Roberts’ father is working inside. Her father-in-law is about to clock off. Her late mother worked here for decades, too. “Once this place goes down, the valley is crushed,” she says. Sethman nods in agreement.
On the face of it, Charleroi’s Pyrex plant fits perfectly with Trump’s brand of “America First” economic populism. The product is made in the US, steeped in local history and rooted in a region that broadly votes Republican. And yet the former president has not mentioned it at all, instead focusing on the myth of immigrants plaguing the community with crime.
It is a familiar veneer, of which you might expect those in other rust belt communities – to which Trump promised so much and delivered so little – to be wary. But while Roberts and Sethman acknowledge most of their colleagues would rather Trump not talk about immigration and instead focus on their jobs, they acknowledge the workforce here is split about 50/50. As deadlocked, perhaps, as the state at large. “It’s dividing people, dividing families,” says Sethman of the election. “When has this ever happened?”
Neither say how they plan to vote, but they point out that, unlike others in the family, they do not have Trump signs on their lawns.
* * *
Further to the south-east, near Pennsylvania’s border with Ohio, I drive out for an evening with one of Trump’s top surrogates in the region, the West Virginia governor, Jim Justice. He is a former billionaire who inherited a family fortune in the coal and hospitality industries, but his net worth has dwindled to a mere $500m. He is primed to assume a seat in the US Senate, potentially tipping the balance of power in favour of the Republicans in Congress. Tonight’s event is a frenzied mix of messaging, jutting between slapstick comedy and a display of the GOP’s darkest inner leanings.
The 73-year-old is hitting the trail with his five-year-old English bulldog, Babydog, who is carried into the small event space on a camping chair. She sits panting, her tongue drooping from her mouth, for about two hours straight. Some in the crowd hold large placards with her image under the slogan “Vote for my dad”, while others queue for selfies.
It doesn’t take long for the gathering to take a turn. Justice speaks forcefully about his plans to drastically cut benefits if he is sent to Washington – potentially replicating a similar controversial move in West Virginia this year.
A woman in the crowd, her vitriol so sharp that it cuts through the room, shouts: “We know it was stolen. What has been done from then until now?”
Justice tells her he “agrees wholeheartedly” and describes what happened in 2020 as “terrible”, but urges her to put the last election behind her and go out to vote again. Another party member encourages her to sign up as a poll watcher, to root out “the fraud”. Herein lies a core tenet of the party’s organising strategy in 2024 – to rally support behind one of the greatest lies ever told in American history, perpetuated on repeat by rich and powerful men.
I speak to Justice after his remarks. Babydog is still sitting on her chair nearby. I ask him whether he worries if his party’s strategy will only increase division, no matter the result. “Do I really believe in my heart that we had some level of voter fraud in 2020? Sure we did. But we moved on,” he says.
In an election where an entire gamut of outcomes seems possible – from a Harris landslide to a comfortable Trump victory to protracted unrest – we will find out in only a few days if the country truly has moved on.
• Oliver Laughland is the Guardian’s US southern bureau chief
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
