Donald Trump won 79.4pc of the vote in McDowell County, West Virginia. Locals hope he will deliver the change they have waited
McDowell County, West Virginia, can be a brutal place.
In February, massive floods killed three people including a two-year-old boy who was found 10 miles downriver from the truck he was travelling in with his grandparents and sisters.
The remains of a bridge are still violently twisted across the river by the road into Welch, the county seat. Some places became so inaccessible that – in the richest country in the world – emergency services had to use pack mules to deliver supplies.
Sandi and Tony Blankenship’s kitchen table is stacked high with paperwork for families Sandi is helping to get flood recovery money to repair their wrecked homes.
Sandi, 53, grew up as a coal miner’s daughter in McDowell, before becoming a nurse, mother, foster mother, Christian missionary and Donald Trump voter.
The 47th US president’s surprisingly comfortable victory in last year’s election came in part from his ability to reach people like her. While the Republicans have traditionally been the party of the wealthy, Trump managed to win over a large proportion of working-class voters by channelling their rage against globalisation and a system they felt had left them behind.
“They voted for Trump to get even with those who broke their promises,” says Frank Luntz, a veteran US political analyst.
Telegraph analysis shows McDowell County is the poorest Republican county in America that has a population of more than 10,000 people. Household income here averages $29,980 (£22,600) a year. Of the 3,142 US counties, it is one of only eight where household income is less than $30,000.
After decades of voting staunchly Democrat, McDowell County is now part of Trumpland. The president won 79.4pc of the vote here in 2024.
“We’ve had enough politicians to destroy this country and we needed a businessman,” says Sandi. “And his business model is wonderful, impeccable. It cannot be argued with.”
To Sandi, Trump is bringing winds of change to Washington that will bring jobs back to America and lift up places like McDowell County.
But far away on Wall Street, economists and investors fear the US president’s wildly aggressive and unpredictable trade war is about to drive up inflation and tip America into recession.
McDowell County is at the heart of the question of just how far Trump can push the economy before he faces the wrath of his own supporters, many of whom may find themselves at the sharp end of any downturn.
“What Trump is doing is so dangerous for his own political future,” says Luntz. “These are people who went all in on him. They cannot afford higher prices, and they will punish him if these tariffs lead to higher prices.”
For now, Sandi and her husband are unfazed. “We’re already so poor and we’re already so stressed in this county and in this state, at this point, we won’t hardly notice,” she says.
But it is early days in the president’s trade war and sentiment may change.
“I don’t know what breaks them, but I think the tariffs thing could,” says Luntz.
‘I agree with everything he’s doing’
Stock markets have been in turmoil since President Trump unveiled his ‘reciprocal’ tariffs at the start of April – Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
On April 2, when he announced enormous “reciprocal” tariffs on America’s trading partners and launched a massive escalation in his trade war with China, Trump sent a wrecking ball through markets and economic forecasts.
Although some of the $10 trillion or so that was wiped off global stock markets in the days after has since been regained, the benchmark S&P 500 US stock index is still down by about a tenth since the start of the year. The Nasdaq is down by more than 15pc.
Goldman Sachs has slashed its forecast for US growth this year from 2.4pc to just 0.5pc and says the probability of a recession is now 45pc. JP Morgan, America’s biggest bank, puts it at 60pc. Larry Fink, the boss of the world’s biggest money manager BlackRock, has warned the US economy may already be in recession.
Such probabilities are unlikely to matter to the working folk of West Virginia. But what they do care about are prices.
“They’re pay cheque to pay cheque voters. They struggle at the end of the week or the end of the month,” says Luntz.
John Williams, head of the New York Federal Reserve, has warned that tariffs will push US inflation from its current rate of 2.4pc to as high as 4pc.
Consumer expectations for inflation have hit their highest level since 1981, according to the University of Michigan’s index.
“It’s not the tariffs themselves, it’s whether or not they lead to higher prices at Walmart or Target,” says Luntz. The bosses of both these American retail giants have warned explicitly that this will happen.
Inflation is abstract but what voters care about is “affordability, that’s a day-to-day situation”, Luntz explains. “It’s how much their food and fuel and their automobile costs them every day.”
A breakdown of expectations by political affiliation shows that since Trump’s inauguration, even Republican voters are now expecting higher prices. Republican economic sentiment is also in decline.
Higher prices could have potentially huge implications for the voters who carried Trump to victory in 2024.
“There’s about 40pc of the country that will hate everything he does. There’s about 40pc of the country that will love everything that he does,” says Luntz. “It’s that 20pc in the middle.”
This group is politically independent and alienated from politics in general.
“They tend to be less educated, less likely to consume news. And a number of them voted for Trump because they did not like [Kamala] Harris and she never told them what they were going to do,” Luntz says.
“They tended to vote Democrat in the past. They’re not Republicans at all. Those who voted for Trump, they voted for him, not the party.
“I know these people. I talk to them all the time, and they’re really angry because they feel like they did what they were supposed to do and life just did not turn out well for them.”
Squeezed budgets become most evident during national holidays, when people have to shop for family occasions and have time to reflect outside the daily grind. It was Thanksgiving in 2021 when voters first started to feel the toll of inflation under President Joe Biden.
The next major US holiday this year is Memorial Day on May 26. After that is Independence Day.
“On July 4, picnics happen,” says Luntz. “I think Trump has another three months before voters will turn on him.”
That is not the sentiment in McDowell County.
“If anybody would actually understand what world trade is and understand how we’re getting screwed right now, they would be praising the man,” 36-year-old Justin Beavers says of Trump.
“The reason why people have a bad opinion about him is that he has just done too much, too fast. But I told my wife that. I said, I guarantee you when he comes to office that he’s going to do basically a shock. It’s going to be bad for at least six months.
“But as a country we must be doing something right because we’ve had over 50 or 60 countries come to us and say ‘let’s negotiate this now’.”
Justin Beavers, 36, backs President Trump even though he has ‘done too much, too fast’ – Chris Jackson
People in McDowell County are resilient.
When Beavers was crushed under a concrete block at work he went back down the coal mines the next day with a broken ankle. Beavers has since been left unable to work by his injuries, but still backs Trump to the hilt despite the fact he is slashing the social security net.
“I agree with everything that he’s doing, I just don’t agree with how we’re going,” he says.
The Blankenships similarly think Trump is on to a good thing. Sandi is particularly pleased with the drastic government cuts that Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) is making.
“If they get rid of the IRS [Internal Revenue Service], we won’t have to pay income taxes,” she says.
While disappointed that Trump has not brought prices down already, Sandi argues he has not had enough time yet to do so. For voters like her, they are still in the honeymoon period of their political love affair with Trump.
‘The coal went out and the opioids came in’
Coal trucks rumbling through Gary are a reminder of more prosperous times – Chris Jackson
The Skygusty Highway through the mountains into McDowell County is a road that puts the pin in hairpin turns.
A seemingly endless coal freight train runs slowly across the cast iron bridge above the town of Maybeury and then on a rail track through the trees next to the road.
Take the road long enough and you reach Gary, a “city” where only around 800 people live.
Outside Gary, a huge iron structure supports an industrial coal conveyor belt that runs from the top of the mountainside down to the mounds of coal and trucks beside the rail tracks.
McDowell has some of the richest coal seams in the world and for several decades in the early 20th century was America’s biggest coal producer.
Coal production here is still going, but mechanisation means the number of jobs needed to support it have cratered – and so has the population. In the 1950s, 100,000 people lived in McDowell County. Now, just 18,000 call it home.
The county does not have enough people to sustain its buildings. In Welch, a shredded American flag flutters in the wind outside a shopfront with a plastic skeleton hanging in the window. Entire streets are similarly dilapidated.
Welch is full of abandoned shops after its population collapsed – Chris Jackson
Some clapboard houses are pristine with owners mowing their front lawns. But many are vacant and collapsed.
Among the trees and wisteria growing out of the hillside are the brick columns of old chimneys, standing naked and bizarrely tall – the last remains of homes that have long ago disintegrated around them. Far more coal trucks rumble through the town than people.
The County Commission has identified some 5,000 structures across McDowell that are long-term vacant. It is possible to buy a five-bedroom house for $15,000.
Politicians have tried to speak to the area for decades. In 1960, John F Kennedy gave a speech from the Welch Municipal Parking Garage, the year before he became president.
“Washington, DC – the nation’s capital – is only a few hundred miles from McDowell County. But the administration in Washington has less understanding of your problems, less concern over your distress, than it displays for peoples and lands on the other side of the globe,” Kennedy said.
“Had the president come to McDowell County he would have seen a once-prosperous people – the people of the largest and most important coal-mining county in the world – who were now the victims of poverty, want and hunger.”
Kennedy made McDowell County the first site of his pilot food stamps programme when he became president.
However, Kennedy and all the presidents since have failed to stop the area’s long-term decline.
In lieu of coal jobs came opioids. West Virginia’s drug overdose mortality rate is a mile above any other state.
Jackie, 50, did not vote in the 2024 election because she was in prison. “No, ma’am. I was locked up.”
If she had voted, she would have voted for Trump. “Absolutely. He’s very smart. He’s intelligent,” Jackie says. But she trails off. “I’ve had no Ritalin today so I might bounce around a bit.”
This is the only drug she takes these days.
“I used to take everything, everything. Ecstasy, acid, cocaine. I used to shoot up heroin, and oxycontin. I went to prison for that, for distribution,” says Jackie. She takes off her jacket to show the track marks on the insides of her elbows.
“I started when I was 12. They kept me on morphine when I was 12 because I had a head injury. Then the oxycontin came out.”
Today, she’s 50 and carrying a heavy bag of her belongings around the empty streets of Welch.
Locals point out houses where junkies have overdosed. Waif people with caved mouths and hoods over their heads shuffle around the edges of petrol stations.
“The biggest thing we’ve had is a lot of our friends and a lot of their kids are gone. They’ve overdosed,” says Sandi.
“We keep Narcan, the antidote, in all of our vehicles and all of our pockets. Almost everybody carries Narcan. It’s just the way of life here now. The coal went out and the opioids came in. It was the perfect recipe for disaster here and it did its job.”
The car park where Kennedy spoke is now populated only by a smattering of abandoned cars with deflated tyres.
New world order
Sixty-five years after Kennedy’s speech, it is Trump who McDowell County residents feel is speaking to them. And he is not talking about food stamps, but overturning the world order.
In the 72-year period from 1936 to 2008, McDowell County voted Democrat in every single election bar 1972. However, the area started voting Republican in 2008.
Sandi grew up as a Democrat and voted for Obama in his first term. “The change that he spoke of was everything I wanted,” says Sandi. “After about a year and a half of Obama I realised I really screwed that up.”
Trump has won in the county’s last three elections with an ever-increasing majority. The biggest draw is the way he talks about coal.
A coal washing facility in Welch. Hillary Clinton spooked locals when she said she wanted to put coal miners ‘out of business’ in 2016 – Chris Jackson
“A lot of the registered Republicans in McDowell County are registered Republican because Hillary Clinton said she was going to close the coal mines,” says Pat McKinney, a member of the local Republican Party committee.
During a fateful town hall in Columbus, Ohio, in 2016, Clinton touted her plan to replace fossil fuel energy production with renewables.
“I’m the only candidate which has a policy about how to bring economic opportunity using clean renewable energy as the key into coal country,” she said. “Because we’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.”
She added that “we’re going to make it clear that we don’t want to forget those people”. But the damage was done. In her 2017 book What Happened, Clinton said it was the campaign mistake that “I regret the most”.
“Both the Obama and Biden administrations put a big hurt on coal in the county, so the Trump administration was seen as an escape from that,” says McKinney.
“Trump is pushing coal. And we have been taught that he who supports coal is who we support, regardless of what else they do. Because we have to keep the coal mines open.”
On April 8, Trump signed an executive order titled Reinvigorating America’s Beautiful Clean Coal Industry. It stated: “We must encourage and support our nation’s coal industry to increase our energy supply, lower electricity costs, stabilise our grid, create high-paying jobs, support burgeoning industries and assist our allies.”
Under the executive order, officials must now identify coal reserves on federal lands and propose policies to extract them.
While Trump is vocal in his support for the industry, his broader policies appear to threaten it. Most of McDowell County’s coal is exported and much of it goes to China, which has imposed 125pc tariffs on US imports in response to Trump’s trade war.
‘A recession? We didn’t notice’
Sandi Blankenship says when prices rise, locals simply go without – Chris Jackson
Sandi and Tony were born and raised in McDowell County. They met when they were teenagers and have been married for 34 years.
They left for 19 years but came back eventually. “We’re happier here at home. It was hard to make it out there in other places where there’s so many rules. We didn’t have a ton of rules growing up here, you know what I’m saying?” says Sandi.
“Even if you wanted to visit somebody, you know how you call your friend and say ‘can I come over on Saturday?’. Here you don’t do that, you just show up.”
People in McDowell feel far removed from government and public services. Signs in the Blankenships’ hallway read: “I’d rather have a gun in my hand than a cop on the phone” and “We don’t call 911”, with bullets marking each “1”.
While it may sound threatening to cosmopolitan readers, it is a community where people do not lock their front doors and in which people are used to doing things for themselves.
Recession is not such a scary word here. Neither is inflation.
When prices rise, people simply go without, says Sandi. Her household has already stopped buying orange juice after bad harvests sent orange prices soaring in 2024.
“We haven’t bought orange juice in a year. We used to buy orange juice every week, but we just quit buying it. Actually the grocery store here quit carrying it,” says Sandi.
Tony has to google when a recent recession was and tells me there was one in 2007 and 2008. “We didn’t notice.”
‘We’re f—ed’
Harold McBride, the mayor of Welch, is hopeful Trump can change things. But the long history of broken promises made to lift up West Virginia leaves him cynical.
“If it doesn’t work, but he has enough guts to say ‘I messed up, let’s try something else back up here’, then you know he’s got the best interest of this country,” says McBride.
But he adds: “If he doesn’t, it’s time to go.”
McDowell County may have had a large Trump majority, but it is devoid of political signage. There are no posters outside houses, no signs in windows, no bumper stickers.
Voter apathy is a big problem, says McKinney. Many people simply did not vote at all. Trump’s support has been building here but it may prove fickle if he cannot deliver meaningful change or sends prices soaring.
However, if the president does turn things around, then he will be loved.
Either way, it is clear McDowell County is not a place filled with hope. One Chevrolet pickup parked in Gary has a sign emblazoned across the back that says “We’re F—ed”. A map of the United States sits in place of the “u”.