Protests in Trump country test his hold in rural white areas

In lake country 200 miles (320 kilometers) rthwest of Detroit, hundreds danced, prayed and demanded racial justice in Cillac, a Michigan town that was long home to a neo-Nazi group. It was t an isolated scene. In eastern Ohio, even more demonstrated in rural Mount Vern, a town with its own current of racial intolerance, just as ors did in Manheim, Pennsylvania, a tiny farming town in Lancaster County, with its small but active Ku Klux Klan presence.

protest movement over black injustice has quickly spre deep into predominantly white, small-town America, tably throughout parts of country that delivered presidency for Donald Trump. Across Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, more than 200 such demonstrations have taken place, many in cities with fewer than 20,000 residents, according to local media, organizers, participants and online tracking tool CrowdCount.

“That’s what’s so striking, that se protests are taking place in rural places with a white nationalist presence,” said Lynn Tramonte, who grew up near Mount Vern and is monitoring Black Lives Matter demonstrations around Ohio.

protests in se Republican-leaning areas offer a test of president's ability to reassemble his older, white voting bloc. If he cant replicate that coalition, it would leave Trump with few options, especially since he continues to lose support in suburbs.

“If President Trump cant hold onto white, working-class voters in rural, small-town Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Ohio, I don’t kw how he wins election," said Terry Monna, director of Center for Public Affairs at Franklin & Marshall College, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. “Can you rule out he won’t have that same level of enthusiasm? , you can’t.”

Trump carried Pennsylvania by about 44,000 votes in 2016, in part with overwhelming support from a patchwork of rural, white counties.

pattern also played out in Michigan and Wisconsin, where he won by even fewer votes. In Ohio, that coalition propelled him to an easy victory.

Trump's reelection campaign is working chiefly through online outreach to hold onto his largely white base and to identify new voters in rural areas as a defense against inros by presumptive Democratic minee Joe Biden.

Some polls suggest that, while white voters without college degrees are still a strong group for Trump, y could be more open to supporting Biden than y were to supporting Democrat Hillary Clinton four years ago.

Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh did t directly dress protests taking place in counties won by president, but said more generally in a statement to Associated Press, "President Trump expressed disgust and shock over what happened to George Floyd and praised peaceful demonstrations, but also kws that Americans cant live with riots and lawlessness in cities nationwide.”

But pace of change over racial justice after Floyd's death last month by police in Minneapolis has quickened and has sparked protests in hundreds of communities in every state, on a scale rarely, if ever, seen before. It is t that Biden will necessarily win rural counties that Trump carried easily, but he may be able to cut into Trump's margins eugh to bring those states back to Democratic column.

In Cillac, branch home of National Socialist Movement — among nation's prominent neo-Nazi groups as recently as 2007 — black organizers were undeterred in staging ir event at a lakeside pavilion even as armed opponents associated with white nationalist group Michigan Militia parked nearby as a show of force.

Trump won Wexford County, home to Cillac, with 65% of vote, similar to neighboring counties in lightly populated region, where unemployment has run higher than aver in Michigan.

In neighboring Grand Traverse County, which Trump won by a smaller margin, more than 2,000 packed Traverse City's Lake Michigan shoreline park to hear protest organizer Courtney Wiggins. 38-year-old black woman listed demands, including that police in 95% white town of 14,000 end racial profiling, as armed protesters affiliated with far-right Proud Boys dotted perimeter.

Though similar events popped up in exurban Cedarburg and Grafton, keys to Ozaukee County in GOP-leaning suburbs of Milwaukee, far more have materialized many miles from major metropolitan areas in se four pivotal states, according to organizers and vocates who have tracked protests.

In Mount Vern, Ohio, seat of Kx County where Trump received 66% of vote, 700 people turned out on June 6 despite threats from opponents, who std an impromptu rally later that day.

Dozens of protests have taken place in counties in se four battleground states that Trump flipped from Democrat to Republican. Among m were Macomb County outside Detroit, Port and Mahoning counties in rast Ohio, and — perhaps most tably — Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, where voters swung dramatically from President Barack Obama in 2012 to Trump four years later.

Still, vast majority have taken place in more than 200 small cities and towns across se four states, like Oconto, Wisconsin, Marietta, Ohio, and Meville, Pennsylvania, all with populations under 20,000 and in counties Trump carried with at least 60% of vote.

And while battle for White House will likely be wd most intensely in se states' diversifying suburbs, where Democrats me gains in 2018, even a slight uptick among Democrats or a softening of Trump support in vast s between could be eugh to alter election.

If Biden carries every state Clinton did in 2016 and reclaims Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, he would win a majority of Electoral College votes.

Of those states, ne was as close as Michigan, which Trump won by 10,704 votes out of more than 4.7 million ballots cast.

A little more than 11,000 voters backed Obama in 2008 and eir didn't vote or supported Trump in 2016 in Grand Traverse County and five counties surrounding it, including Cillac's home in Wexford County, according to state voting records.

“se marginal numbers, a few extra votes here and re, we’re talking, like, a handful of votes per county, and y exist in my six-county region,” said Betsy Coffia, a Democratic Grand Traverse County commissioner. “This can make a difference.”