A generation ago, a man like David Brunelle would probably be working through the autumn of a long career for the same manufacturer in north-eastern Ohio. A Democrat like Hillary Clinton could probably count on his vote.



But having worked for eight companies since he was 18, Brunelle has now been without a full-time job for about eight months. His 50th birthday came and went in May. He tries to stay cheerful, but he’s tired, and he voted for Donald Trump.



“There is just constant change,” Brunelle said. “It’s always changing, merging, closing, takeovers and restructuring.”



US presidential election: five scenarios 1) The Clinton Crush: In which Donald Trump loses every state with even a hint of Democratic flavor and drops a few big Republican ones too – the fantasy scenario for every American offended by Trump’s candidacy 2) The Trump Bank Shot: Trump has performed strongly all night, winning Florida, Ohio, North Carolina and Iowa. In this squeaker scenario, Trump owes his electoral life to white voters. 3) The Clinton Cliffhanger: Democrats’ blood pressure climbs to 220/140 before Florida finally reports a conclusive win for Clinton at 3am 4) The Al Gore: The result comes down to a razor-thin margin, resulting in a refusal and, ultimately, the mother of all legal battles. 5) The Make America Great Again: Britain Brexited. The Cubs won the World Series. And guess what? These things happen in threes. Brace yourselves for whatever may be.

Brunelle is not even confident that Trump would follow through on his quixotic pledges to revive heavy industry in the midwest by rewriting international trade deals, punishing companies for moving jobs overseas and declaring economic war on China.

“But he’ll be different,” Brunelle, who lives in the tiny town of Atwater, said hopefully. “He’ll be different, in some way or another.”

It is with the support of voters such as Brunelle, who feel belittled rather than empowered by globalisation, that Trump hopes to wrest Ohio back into the Republican column on Tuesday. After a late surge in polls, Trump holds a 2.2% lead in the RealClearPolitics average. The state has backed the winner at every presidential election since 1960, when it picked Richard Nixon over John F Kennedy.

David Brunelle.

Once-proud rust belt cities that have been Democratic strongholds for decades appear to be within the real estate developer’s reach. Only eight years ago, 86% of presidential primary voters in Youngstown and the surrounding Mahoning County, for instance, were Democrats and just 14% were Republicans. This year, the split was 51-49.

Under Barack Obama, Ohio’s economy has recovered steadily from the 2008 recession. The number of manufacturing jobs in the state has actually ticked up slightly in recent years, after falling sharply and consistently under the administration of George W Bush.

Trump has, however, relentlessly claimed that the sector’s decades-long structural decline was somehow caused directly by Clinton and her husband, Bill, who was president when the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta), which was signed by his predecessor, came into force.

The Republican nominee has turned the trade pact into a shorthand for one of the central themes of his campaign: that leaders in Washington, supposedly incapable of standing up to canny foreigners, have left US workers exposed to the ravages of international competition without protection.

“Every time you see a closed factory or wiped out community in Ohio, it was essentially caused by the Clintons,” Trump said at a rally in Springfield last month.

However untrue, the message has resonated deeply with workers such as Brunelle, who long for the stability enjoyed by their parents and grandparents.

“Because of global competition, we have to compete with second- and third-rate countries around the world,” he said, noting that he and his friends discuss Nafta quite a bit these days.

Until last year, Brunelle managed a plant in the town of Bedford for Production Pattern, a company which makes moulds for vehicles. But the firm was buffeted by competition from China, he said, where companies could sell finished moulds for less than the cost of the materials he and his colleagues were using to make them. Some jobs at Brunelle’s plant were moved out of state and others went overseas, he said. Brunelle lost his position, which paid him $70,000 a year.

Before that, Brunelle was a plant manager for Water Star, a hi-tech manufacturer in Newbury, Ohio. The firm makes anodes and cathodes that are used to purify and treat water. But then Water Star was bought by Tennant, a commercial cleaning company from Minnesota, which wanted the technology for its floor scrubbers. Brunelle lost his job.

As he wandered around a state-sponsored jobs fair in Akron on Monday, Brunelle winced at the sort of positions on offer at many of the stands.

Packing boxes of potato chips on the midnight shift for $30,000 a year. Helping gamblers use video slot machines at an out-of-town mega-casino for $10 an hour plus tips. Serving sandwiches in a popular fast-food outlet for $9 an hour.

Brunelle is a smart man. He knows the arguments in favor of globalisation, knows how difficult it would be for any president to turn back the clock. But as he sets off to wander the aisles for a few more minutes while employers begin dismantling their stalls, it’s just difficult to take.

“In the long term, maybe it is good for the world economy,” he said. “But we have to go down for the rest of them to go up. And it hurts.”