As the US prepares to head to the polls in November, Michigan’s Saginaw County finds itself in an interesting position, having become one of America's most important bellwether communities.
In 2016, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump won the county by just 1.1 per cent in his shock victory over Hillary Clinton, a Democrat. Four years later, more voters backed Democrat Joe Biden – but only by 303 votes.
It was one of three counties in Michigan to switch from Mr Trump to Mr Biden in 2020 and has proven to be on the pulse of the national political mood, choosing every president over the last four elections.
In an election that is set to be extremely tight, how voters in Saginaw County feel could offer an insight into who will win in November.
Republicans and Democrats alike will be keeping a close eye on the county in the weeks and months ahead. Realising Saginaw County’s importance, Mr Biden campaigned here in March before ending his re-election bid in July. Mr Trump followed him there in May.
For Anne DeLisle – chairwoman of the Republican Party’s eighth congressional district in Michigan, which includes Saginaw County – the area represents the US as a whole.
“Saginaw County is a perfect balance of farmers, rural people, and you have an urban area,” she told The National. “It’s a really good mix and representation of your general voting population.”
The county's largest town, Saginaw, boomed during the early 20th century due to car manufacturing, the Second World War effort and a prospering salt brine industry, and its population rose precipitously.
But Saginaw’s fortunes eventually began to fade.
As companies moved operations to Mexico and Asia and amid the growing mechanisation of industry, blue-collar jobs evaporated. In the two decades to 2014, the county lost about half of its manufacturing jobs, though many have since been replaced by professional and business services positions.
Today, the city’s population is less than half its 1960s peak, when it stood at close to 100,000, marking one of the largest population declines of any major US city.
All this appeared to have fuelled the rise in popularity of Mr Trump, which has taken some in Saginaw County by surprise.
“Before Hillary [Clinton] lost, I thought Michigan was a solidly Democratic state,” Eduardo Morales, a retired teacher, told The National while out walking his dog on Saginaw’s Ojibway Island on a recent sunny Saturday morning.
He says that when Mr Biden came to Saginaw County this year to campaign, it was something of a failure.
“The gathering was in my neighbourhood, but only a selected few were invited,” he said. “I think it was by invitation only and when I looked it up on Facebook, there was like less than 50 people there. Then he went to a golf course, but it rained. They said it was a success, but I don’t know.”
Mr Morales’s father emigrated to the US from Mexico decades ago, and it is Mr Trump’s rhetoric on immigrants that has turned him off the former president.
However, he still has concerns about the ability of Vice President Kamala Harris – the Democratic nominee – to defeat Mr Trump in November.
“I’ll vote for whoever it is, but it’s sort of late in the game,” he said. “I can’t take another four years of Trump. It’s chaotic.”
For Brian Smith, who runs Smitty’s Smoke N’Soul Food van out of car parks along Dixie Highway in south-east Saginaw, Ms Harris becoming the Democratic nominee makes little difference.
“I don’t think a Democrat or a Republican is going to help the small guy, whether black, white or anything else,” he told The National.
“I know the tricks of the trades with the Democrats. They throw a lot of shiny objects in front of you to get you to vote, and then once they get in, they just sold you a dream. They’re not going to help you.
“As far as her going to do something for the poor or the middle class, [Ms Harris] is not going to do anything different than Biden did.”
The past several years of inflation have been near devastating to Mr Smith’s business. He says he cannot afford to hire help without raising prices that could turn customers away.
But he knows that rising costs are not the fault of the White House.
“Biden had nothing to do with the inflation,” he said. Instead, he blames the Trump administration for failing to properly address the pandemic and its knock-on effects.
Former president Barack “Obama had things in place to prepare for a pandemic. What did Trump do? He went back and destroyed all that,” Mr Smith said.
Other residents are also seething over the economic ills of the past, when the region saw thousands of manufacturing jobs lost when Bill Clinton, a Democrat, was president for eight years in the 1990s.
“NAFTA [North American Free Trade Agreement] was disastrous for the automotive industry,” says Ms DeLisle. “So many of our jobs left here and went overseas.”
During Mr Trump's time in office, NAFTA was scrapped and a new agreement – the USMCA – replaced it in 2020.
She blames Democratic Party politicians for failing residents in this part of Michigan.
“When you have areas – Saginaw, Flint and Detroit – that are built on the back of General Motors, Chrysler, Ford and all those jobs are leaving at the hands of Democrats, that’s what happened,” Ms DeLisle said.
“Trump is the best choice for our area because of his policies. There is not a single person I know who is better off financially in 2024 than they were in 2018.”
Mr Smith, however, is upset by the double standards he believes unfairly favour Mr Trump over the regular working American.
In May, the former president was convicted on 34 felony counts connected to a hush-money scheme during his 2016 campaign. He has yet to be sentenced but is likely to face no time in prison.
After he was released, Mr Smith could not get a job.
“But here, Trump is going for the highest office in the land: [access to] national secrets, everything that comes with that job. He can do all that, but I can’t.”
He said he plans not to vote in November.
