Large numbers of voters across rural Wisconsin flipped from supporting Obama to Trump – now dividing lines over the president are even deeper

Pastor Franz Gerber is worried that so many members of his congregation appear to idolise Donald Trump more than they worship Jesus.

The preacher at the Praise Chapel Community church was among those who voted for Trump in rural Forest county, Wisconsin, which swung heavily from Barack Obama to the Republican in 2016 and so helped deliver a state that put the president in the White House.

Gerber now has some regrets about his vote but what really disturbs him is an unquestioning and even aggressive adulation for Trump within his flock.

“It seems like there are many evangelical Christians that are willing to die on the hill of supporting the Republican president, supporting Donald J Trump. And to me, that hill is not worth dying on. No matter who the candidate is, no matter who the individual is,” he said. “To put all your hope into that individual is a dangerous road. Scripture would warn us against that.”

Gerber’s concern reflects a deepening political polarisation within sprawling Forest county, home to about 9,000 people and two Native American reservations across about 1,000 square miles, where friendships are strained over Trump and more than a few people shy from talking politics.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Downtown Crandon, Wisconsin. Photograph: Lauren Justice/The Guardian

Forest was one of 19 counties in Wisconsin that flipped from the US’s first African American president to one of its most polarising in 2016. Obama took 56% of the votes in Forest county in 2008. Eight years later, Trump won 61%.

The large swings across rural Wisconsin squeezed out a narrow victory for Trump in the state by fewer than 23,000 votes, a margin of just 0.77%. Alongside wins in other parts of the midwest, it delivered him the White House even though Hillary Clinton won the popular vote.

This week, the Guardian returns to three midwest counties in Wisconsin, Iowa and Michigan that flipped from Obama to Trump to gauge whether the president can repeat victories he probably has to pull off again in November if he is to be re-elected.

For Gerber, a gregarious preacher with a young family, the deciding issue in voting for Trump was abortion and the next president’s nominations to the supreme court.

“If I had the opportunity again, I may vote differently. I would perhaps vote for someone who’s not part of the major two parties. I would feel that my conscience would feel maybe a little bit cleaner had I gone that route,” he said.

‘It’s going to get a lot nastier before it gets better’

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A billboard referencing divisions in the community due to opioid abuse. Photograph: Lauren Justice/The Guardian

The tightness of Trump’s win in Wisconsin four years ago, and opinion polls showing that all of the leading Democratic contenders would beat him in the state if the presidential election were held now, albeit it by a narrow margin, has given the president’s opponents hope that in November they can deny him a key part of the puzzle that made up his electoral college victory four years ago.

With the Democrats looking to pick up votes in Wisconsin’s major cities, Trump faces the challenge of not only shoring up his existing support in rural areas like Forest county but of finding new votes to offset the loss of women like Jennifer Nery, the former deputy chair of the Republican party in Howard county.

Nery backed the president in 2016, in part under pressure from her family, but it did not take her long to regret it. She now considers Trump, among other things, to be unstable and dangerous. Her change of heart led to a falling-out with a friend, the chair of the county GOP, Terri Burl, and the two stopped speaking.

This year, Nery intends to vote for a Democratic presidential candidate for the first time no matter who it is, although she leans toward two very different options, Pete Buttigieg or Michael Bloomberg.

After the Guardian spoke to Nery last year about her regret at voting for Trump in 2016 she was approached by a Democratic political action committee, LocalVoices, to make a television spot saying she lost faith in Trump. The ad is expected to run later this month.

But Nery, a farmer who looks after rescue animals, is concerned at how it will be received in Forest county.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Jennifer Nery at home on 2 January 2019 in Crandon, Wisconsin. Photograph: Lauren Justice/The Guardian

“I’m worried about retribution. My barn is made of wood. People have matches. Do two plus two,” she said.

Nery discovered that another disillusioned Trump voter who made a similar political advert in eastern Wisconsin was targeted with a social media smear campaign. Alarmed, she turned to Houston King, the campaign director for LocalVoices.

“I said, ‘how nasty is this going to get?’ And he says, ‘it’s going to get a lot nastier before it gets better,’” she said.

King offered to cancel the advert.

“I said, no, don’t. I want to make sure I can tell my grandchildren, my great-grandchildren, I did what I thought I had to do,” said Nery.

Nery thinks there are many more disillusioned Trump voters like her in Forest county but they are hiding their true feelings.

“I think that they’re afraid of the repercussions of saying how they feel,” she said.

‘I’m not voting for him to be my pastor, my father, my role model’

Terri Burl, the local Republican chair who fell out with Nery, dismisses the notion that the president’s support is in decline in northern Wisconsin. But as his re-election campaign kicks into gear she is focused on a GOP initiative to win over female voters who, polling shows, are more likely to be disillusioned with him and to support impeachment. Part of the initiative, Women for Trump, is targeted at female evangelicals, although Burl is not persuaded that they care about the president’s morality.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Terri Burl at home on 2 January 2019 in Crandon, Wisconsin. Photograph: Lauren Justice/The Guardian

“There are a lot of church-going people who support him. People always say, look at how he treats people, his affairs, how he cheated on his wife. People like me say I’m not voting for him to be my pastor, my father, my role model. I’m voting for him to get some things done in Washington DC that have never been done before. We forgive him because of other things,” she said.

Burl was for many years employed on a Native American reservation to work with abused women and people with disabilities. She also has had to rely on government assistance in the past.

“When I moved to Wisconsin and I had a 13-year-old son with me and I was in the middle of a divorce, I needed that helping hand. Food stamps and things for my child,” she said. “But then I got a job here and then I didn’t need the government.”

Burl sees no contradiction between her own need for welfare programmes and the Trump administration’s tightening of access to food stamps. She agrees with the move, she said, because the restrictions do not apply to families with children or those with disabilities.

“Of course, we want to make sure the children are taken care of,” she said. “But single adults, you need to get out there and work. Life is hard. Sorry. Life was hard for me too.”

In the end though, Burl thinks the election will be decided by an economy that many of Trump’s supporters say is doing well under his administration even if they do not feel prosperous. But there is one economic issue on which Burl acknowledges the president is vulnerable.

Trump promised to scrap Obama’s healthcare reforms after insurance premiums surged in some parts of the country, particularly for self-employed people such as farmers. Yet the president has failed to present a credible alternative.

Terri Burl acknowledges that the Democrats’ focus on various models for public health insurance – from Bernie Sanders’ single-payer system to Pete Buttigieg’s gradual expansion of the federal Medicare programme as an option for all Americans – puts Trump on the spot and that he needs to come up with a workable plan to reduce costs.

Burl is not opposed to a version of public medical insurance.

“I think that’s good. Who wouldn’t?” she said.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Terri Burl and Randy Burl. Photograph: Lauren Justice/The Guardian

But she describes Sanders’ plan for a single government-run health plan, known as Medicare for All, as “wacky”.

“It’s not going to fly,” she said. “How much more will taxes go up? I would like a real number. If somebody told me my taxes would go up $500 a year for Medicare for All, I might do it. That’s pretty good. But if somebody told me my taxes would go up $10,000 a year, oh no.”

‘Ultimately, our allegiance is to God, not to a political party’

For Pastor Gerber, it’s not the differences over policy that so disturb him so much as the degree to which the divisive politics of the age has worked its way into his congregation, accentuated by the president’s own confrontational response to disagreement. He sees people who are struggling economically in a county where wages are low and the median household income is about $43,000, not much more than two-thirds of the national average, putting almost religious hope in the president’s promises to revive America’s industries and middle class.

Many evangelicals also see the president as a last line of a political defence against what they regard as encroaching liberalism on their religious values from abortion to LGBTQ+ rights.

Gerber tries to use his sermons to steer congregants to a less trenchant view of politics by urging them to accept that others may disagree with them.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Pastor Franz Gerber of Praise Chapel Community church. Photograph: Lauren Justice/The Guardian

“Many evangelical Christians feel like they have to now fight for the way things used to be or they need to fight for what they feel is biblically true. My concern is that sometimes when we get so busy fighting for certain causes we get lost in spraying fire at other people with our words to the point we lose track of what we’re called to do,” he said. “Ultimately, our allegiance is to God, not to a political party, not to a figure within that political party.”

But that does not always go down well within a congregation Gerber describes as overwhelmingly Republican with a sprinkling of Democrats.

“There is such a defence of the current president by many evangelical Christians to the point of, even as a pastor, if I were to criticise and say, boy, I just didn’t like something, people would get very upset about that.”

One Sunday, Gerber tried to bring his congregants together with a biblical story about Jesus overcoming differences among his disciples. A few days later, a worshipper who heard the sermon visited Gerber.

“This individual said, if he was the pastor, he would kick every Democrat out of this church. I listened and said it’s probably a good thing you’re not the pastor then,” Gerber said, before swiftly adding that perhaps that was not the best response.

The congregant stopped coming to the church.

There is no shortage of entrenched support or opposition to Trump across Forest county, from the army veterans who praise him as standing up for the ordinary soldier to Native Americans, about 15% of the county’s population, who see the president as a racist serving corporate interests at the expense of their traditional rights.

But it is the soft support for Trump – those people who have their doubts but who do not yet see a good enough reason to vote against him – that the Democrats aim to win over.

Gerber, for now at least, is on the fence.

“Will I vote? Yes. Who will I vote for? I don’t know. I tend to lean Republican but that does not mean I could never vote Democrat,” he said. “I will continue to cast my vote for who I believe is the best candidate to help the most people and will also allow me to help the most people. I will not align myself with an individual person as being the one who’s going to fix everything and make everything right.”

For some in Forest county, though, their vote is already decided by how they feel about Trump personally.

‘No one here will vote for Trump. Or if they do, no one will say it’

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Downtown Crandon, Wisconsin. Photograph: Lauren Justice/The Guardian

For now at least, there is little sign of the Democrats organising in Forest county even as the party is increasingly mobilising support in Wisconsin’s major cities. The party took the governorship and other major state offices from the GOP in the 2018 midterm elections and held on to a US Senate seat. And while Republicans won a majority of Wisconsin’s seats in Congress, the Democrats won most votes – not a good sign for the president even if there is still a long road to the election. Neither are Trump’s approval ratings in the state where a slim majority of voters disapprove of his leadership. But if the economy is to be the deciding issue, then the president has the confidence of more than half of voters in Wisconsin. He can also take some comfort from that fact that a narrow majority is against his removal from office following his impeachment.

The Democrats can count on one island of solid support in Forest county. Native Americans on two reservations make up about 15% the county’s population. They donate heavily to the Democratic party and overwhelmingly backed Hillary Clinton in 2016.

On the Sokaogon Chippewa reservation of nearly 5,000 acres, attitudes swiftly hardened against the president after he moved to push the Keystone XL pipeline project through Native American land in South Dakota. That was taken as an early act of hostility alongside his derogatory language about minorities.

“He’s pulled us back in time,” said Zena, 28, who works at the reservation’s health clinic and declined to give her surname. “He called Elizabeth Warren ‘Pocahontas’ which was super offensive.”

Jim Landru, a member of the Sokaogon Chippewa who owns Junior’s Bar, said he has voted for presidents from both major parties over the years, including for Ronald Reagan and George W Bush. But he does not know of a single Trump voter on the reservation.

“No one here will vote for Trump. Or if they do, no one will say it,” he said. “There’s the pipeline and federal cuts. We have lost jobs on the reservation in healthcare, housing, elderly programmes because of cuts.”

Landru said perhaps worst of all is Trump’s casual racism. He thinks the president does it for political effect but it has consequences.

“All the hatred they are generating, it’s terrible. We feel it all the time as Indian people. But before they used to hide it. Now they don’t,” he said. “These guys think they’re playing games but this isn’t a game. This is people’s lives.”