Craig Gilbert

USA TODAY Network

The USA TODAY Network is spending time in eight counties in eight states, exploring the key electoral themes that could decide this fall’s election. Each week from now until the election, we will feature a different one. Today: Waukesha County in Wisconsin.

WAUKESHA, Wis. — Like many voters, Phil Rosen recoils from his choices for president.

“I am sick to my stomach,” he said.

It’s a dire sentiment, but the most striking thing about Rosen’s distress is his politics: He’s an ardent conservative in one of the most reliably “red” counties in America.

In the outer Milwaukee suburbs where he lives, Hillary Clinton is widely disliked. But so is Donald Trump, leaving many GOP voters at sea.

“He’s just a horrible human being. He has no soul … He changes opinions hourly,” said Rosen, 55. “I don’t want Hillary. I don’t like her. I don’t trust her. Trump? How can you trust anything he says?”

Trump needs every Republican vote he can get this fall. But his struggle to excite and unify his party’s voters is damaging his chances in November. And it’s fueling GOP fears that a drop in Republican turnout could hurt candidates up and down the ballot.

Few places illustrate that struggle better than Waukesha County, Wis., an overwhelmingly white and middle-class expanse of office parks, subdivisions and picturesque lakes just west of the Democratic city of Milwaukee.

Four years ago, Waukesha produced more GOP votes per capita than any county its size in America. The landslides it generates are indispensable to the party in statewide elections.

Its presidential turnout in 2012 was nearly unmatched: 83% of voting-age citizens went to the polls. In Wisconsin, “Waukesha” is synonymous with Republican solidarity and electoral clout.

But Trump is badly underperforming here, according to polling this summer by the Marquette Law School. He is running 15 points behind his party’s U.S. Senate candidate, incumbent Ron Johnson. Combining four surveys from June to late August, Trump led Clinton by just 45% to 32% in Waukesha — with more than one in five voters refusing to express a preference.

The Deciders

This is a county that President George W. Bush won by 35 points in 2004, Mitt Romney won by 34 points in 2012 and GOP Gov. Scott Walker won by 46 points in 2014.

“It’s a big problem,” Marquette pollster Charles Franklin said of Trump’s inability to crack 50% in this Republican bastion.

The big question is whether these voters “come home to Trump by Election Day,” he said, “even if they have real reservations.”

Adam Neylon, a 31-year-old Republican state lawmaker from the area, said the key stumbling block for Trump is trust.

“There is a lot of unease at the really grass-roots, base level about our party’s nominee,” Neylon said. “He pivots all the time. It freaks people out.”

In interviews, some GOP voters here called their choices “laughable” and “scary.” Several who planned to vote for Trump termed him the “lesser of two evils.” Others called him “mean,” a “hot mess” and a “real good loose cannon.”

Karla Fuller, 47, is typical of these voters — Republicans torn between their desire to cast a GOP ballot and defeat Clinton, and their alarm over Trump’s volatility and bombast.

“You know there are days when I’m like, ‘Okay, maybe now he’s on the right track,’ and then tomorrow comes, and I just put my head down and go, ‘Ugh, never mind,' ” said Fuller, a veterinary technician interviewed at the city of Waukesha’s weekly Friday night music festival. “I wish the election was a lot further away than what it is."

GOP Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, who shares Waukesha County with House Speaker Paul Ryan, said Trump has two problems here.

“The biggest problem is there are a number of Republicans that don’t want to vote because they don’t like Trump. If they don’t vote, that hurts down-ballot Republicans such as Sen. Johnson,” Sensenbrenner said. “The others are people who won’t vote for Trump, but are (still) going to vote. Whether they vote for Mrs. Clinton or the Libertarian candidate (Gary Johnson) or just leave president blank or not I think remains to be seen.”

Sensenbrenner, who has been in Congress for 37 years, said this election is a first for him.

“Every other election … you see the Republican voters (here) united for the three top offices on the ballot: president or governor, Senate and Congress,” said the lawmaker, who voted against Trump in the Wisconsin primary but supports him in the general election. “That is not the case this year.”

Even party leaders who are more boosterish about Trump acknowledge that the base here isn’t that enthused about him.

Yet they’re counting on GOP voters who can’t stand Clinton and worry about the future makeup of the Supreme Court to do what they usually do in Waukesha: vote Republican in droves up and down the ballot.

That’s vital for Trump because he trails Clinton by an average of roughly 5 points in recent statewide polling.

“It doesn’t bother me that I don’t see a lot of enthusiasm,” said John Macy, chairman of the Waukesha County GOP. “These people vote. They don’t stay home … There are a lot of people in Wisconsin who are never going to get excited about Trump, but I believe they are going to vote for Trump.”

There is little question that Trump will carry this area. Clinton’s negative rating from Wisconsin Republicans has ranged from 94% to 98% in recent months.

The question is whether Trump will pile up the massive vote margins his party needs in this county of roughly 400,000 people.

In Marquette’s polling this summer, only 33% of the county’s voters viewed Trump favorably, while 59% viewed him unfavorably. Remarkably, those numbers were nearly as bad as Clinton’s in Waukesha.

"The difficulty is to win this state, if you have drop off among Waukesha voters and southeast Wisconsin voters, you’ve got to make it up somewhere else,” said GOP strategist Stephan Thompson, a former director of the state party. “But where are you going to go to do that? And when your map is contracting, whether you’re talking about states or counties, you’ve got to more or less put up unprecedented numbers somewhere else."

That’s what happens when your worst numbers with Republicans are in the state’s reddest region. One liberal radio host in Wisconsin calls Waukesha and its neighboring counties the “Ring of Fire” for its GOP turnouts. But Trump lost Waukesha County by 39 points to Ted Cruz in the GOP primary.

Local factors have played a role in his troubles. Trump has picked fights with Walker and Ryan, the state’s most popular Republicans. Walker is viewed favorably by 84% of Wisconsin’s GOP voters, Ryan by 82%.

Trump has drawn flak from conservative talk radio here. And polls suggest his signature issues of trade and immigration don’t resonate all that deeply in a region that is fairly prosperous, well-educated and pro-business.

“It feels like an arranged marriage,” GOP strategist Brian Nemoir said of the relationship between Trump and Wisconsin’s Republican base.

But Waukesha is not an anomaly, either. It has a lot in common with other powerhouse GOP counties outside cities like Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh and Charlotte.

It’s a microcosm of Trump’s problems nationwide cementing the GOP vote. Most polls here and nationally suggest Democratic voters are more unified behind Clinton than Republican voters are behind Trump.

Those divisions are more striking here because they’re so unfamiliar.

“We have a strong Republican Party in Wisconsin, and we have a … fairly united Republican Party in Wisconsin,” said political scientist Lilly Goren of Carroll University in Waukesha.

But that party “is having a very tortured time with the top of its ticket,” she said.

Influential conservatives and high-profile Republicans have been all over the map on Trump. Party voters “are not getting clear signals,” Goren said.

Anti-Trump Republicans see the nominee as the antithesis of the deeply conservative but even-keeled politicians they identify with, such as Walker and Ryan.

But pro-Trump Republicans see GOP dissent over their nominee as disloyalty, or an indulgence the party and country can’t afford.

“OK, you don’t like Donald Trump. Do you like Hillary Clinton? What’s your solution?” said Robin Moore, president of the Republican Women of Waukesha County, reciting her conversations with fence-sitting voters.

Standing on her doorstep in Brookfield, GOP voter Gordana Tomasevic said it’s important to stick together.

“We are strong Republicans,” she said. “It doesn’t matter if it’s Trump or somebody else, that’s how we’re going to vote.”

Most undecided Republicans interviewed here have heard those arguments. They’re wrestling with the consequences of not voting for Trump, which would mean a Clinton presidency.

They’re also wrestling with their stubborn doubts about Trump’s political depth and consistency, along with his tone and temperament.

“Having someone that is impulsive and somewhat volatile in that position is a scary thing,” said voter Jessie Kiser.

The combination of Republican disdain for Clinton and conservative mistrust of Trump makes a place like ultra-red Waukesha County a hub of political frustration this year.

These are voters for whom going to the polls is almost a civic religion. But many are quick to volunteer how hard they’re finding it to cast a presidential vote.

“It’s a tough year. I’m struggling,” Steve Lovelien, a commercial pilot, said.

Retiree Jack Allen has closely followed Trump’s campaign shakeups and rhetorical pivots for signs that he might be settling down.

“If right after the convention he would have kept his mouth shut, I think he would have been a lot further ahead than further behind,” he said. “I don’t want to vote for a third party, because obviously that’s going to give Clinton the job.”

Allen figures Trump is “90% of the way” toward nailing down his vote. “But he really has to be more democratic, or just easier,” he said, searching for the words to describe how Trump could reassure him.

“I’m a Republican, but it is really tough to figure out where to go and what to do,” Allen said. “It’s not the easiest election I’ve been in.”

Craig Gilbert writes for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

To report this series, the USA TODAY Network identified eight counties around the country that represent key voting groups in the November election, from blue-collar and college-educated voters to rural voters and Latinos. Journalists spent time with voters, political observers and experts in these eight counties — blue, red and purple — talking about the presidential candidates, the issues and the importance of this year’s election. Our first story looks at GOP “base” voters in Waukesha County, Wis. In the coming weeks, look for our coverage of the following counties: Chester County, Pa.; Wayne County, Mich.; Maricopa County, Ariz.; Union County, Iowa; Larimer County, Colo.; Clark County, Ohio; and Hillsborough County, Fla.