A Presidential Bellwether Is Still Waiting to Start Winning Under Trump




TERRE HAUTE, Ind. — Nobody is tired of winning here.

Not at the Crossroads Cafe, where regulars pick at politics over breakfast. Not at the Rotary Club, where the meeting dutifully opens with the invocation, Pledge of Allegiance and four-way test for ethical behavior. Not at the Indiana Theater, a grand venue where thousands crammed in on May 1, 2016, to see Donald J. Trump, the candidate who vowed to win so much that Americans would become weary of it.

Here in Vigo County, that disappointment carries extra weight — and perhaps a warning sign for the president. For more than a century, its voters have been almost unerring in choosing the winning presidential candidate, and last year they broke convincingly for Mr. Trump.

But now, the president’s grip on voters here seems shaky.

“Winning? I don’t get a sense that we are winning,” said Bart Colwell, the president of the Terre Haute Savings Bank, who described himself as a Republican but declined to say whom he voted for in November. “I think his tone is pretty negative. His tone would not be a tone that most people in leadership would use.”

Even as many voters here say they like Mr. Trump’s policies on tax cuts and reducing the size of government, the relentlessly combative approach that served him well during the campaign has become a source of deep discontent.


“He can’t keep his mouth shut,” said Jim Hunter, an insurance agent who voted for Mr. Trump. “He is berating his own party. He needs every Republican vote on taxes. I wish that Twitter stuff would all just stop. I don’t even like to see him on TV.” He added, “I would have serious reservations about voting for him again.”

His breakfast companion at the Crossroads Cafe, Bob Murray, a retired accountant, questioned the president’s claim to a long list of accomplishments. “Tell me what he’s won? He won on the Supreme Court nominee, but he hasn’t won on anything else.”

For decades, Vigo County has provided an unlikely place to gauge the center of American politics, where voters are persuadable from one election to the next. Its political fluidity is so great that it voted for Barack Obama in 2008 by a slightly greater margin than it did for Mr. Trump eight years later.

“What does the bellwether idea tell us?” said Craig McKee, a lawyer and lifelong resident of the county. “It tells us that the moods here, somehow, get caught up in the rhythm and Gulf Stream of American politics.”

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