The story of the 2016 presidential election, to some extent, can be told by what happened in Trumbull County, Ohio.

In 2012, the state voted narrowly for Barack Obama. When Ohio was called for Obama on election night, his reelection was all but ensured. But four years later, the state backed Republican Donald Trump by eight points. That was in part because of shifts in places such as Trumbull, a perfectly square county near Youngstown. Obama won Trumbull by 23 points. Trump won it by more than six.

Why? In part because Trump’s pitch was tailored very specifically to places like Trumbull County.

I went to high school there, alongside a number of kids whose parents worked at the Lordstown automotive plant. If the story of nearby Youngstown tracked with the steel industry, the story of Warren (Trumbull’s county seat) at that time was about how Lordstown was faring. Trump’s promise to bolster blue-collar manufacturing was exactly the sort of thing that would resonate in the area, a place no longer as dependent on manufacturing as it had been but a place still more dependent on it than others. I mean, this was the district once represented by former congressman Jim Traficant (D), a pre-Trump Trump.