In the course of an hour I heard the same from a waitress, a hotel clerk, and an Uber driver—all white, all under 35, and all unwilling to support a candidate who had attacked Hispanics, Muslims and women. The driver took me across the Salt River into Tempe, home to Arizona State’s main campus, where I wandered the strip of crowded bars alongside totally wasted college students and police officers on horseback.

Jason Enriquez stood at the end of one of those long lines that men wait in at crowded bars on Saturday nights as women skip to the front. He said that there are a few Trump supporters in his ASU classes who wear red “Make America Great Again” hats, and that many of his acquaintances are Bernie Sanders supporters who lost interest in politics and wouldn’t necessarily vote on election day. “I have to vote the lesser of two evils, so I’m voting for Hillary,” he said. “Trump is a scumbag. He says Mexico sends rapists and murderers over here. I’m Mexican. I’m not a rapist or a killer. I’m an engineering student! I’m here to learn just like everyone else. Right now I’m researching this thermoelectric polymer that generates energy from body heat. I’m really interested in renewable energy. So fuck him. He didn’t grow up around the culture. He doesn’t know what it’s like.”

A few paces away, I met a couple with divided allegiances. He was in a frat, and wore an Arizona State jersey, a backward baseball cap, tight khaki shorts, and leather loafers. “I think Hillary is more qualified, she has the temperament and experience and I just have a lot of trust in her,” he said. “Most of my friends are for Trump, just because they’re Republicans, and I respect that, but I just disagree.”

He glanced pointedly at his girlfriend, who wore a black dress and heels and spoke in a drunkenly earnest, words-slightly-slurred way. “I'm a Republican. And I do not want either candidate. I'm just voting for the best in the situation,” she explained. “There's nothing about Trump that makes me want to vote for him. But I'm a true Republican at heart, that's how I am, and voting for Hillary will just... it's not anything specific against her, but I'm a Republican. Cruz was my guy.”

Like many voters, her family background shaped her partisan identity. She’d no sooner change it than the football team that she sat cheering for with her dad as a toddler. “My family is a huge part of everything,” she said. “Other people think that they're getting all this shit for free. And I'm sorry that you're not part of the whatever percentage that it comes from, but some of us are, and my dad worked hard for his job, he worked hard to provide for us, and that shouldn't mean that he has to provide for everybody else, too, because he worked hard for where he is right now.”

Taxes are “a fat majority of why I'm voting for Trump,” she said. “I do not want Trump to be my president. Goddamnit, I don't want him to be my president! But I am a Republican at heart, and that's who I'll vote for at heart. Trump, we get it, he's a big, fat dick. But if you're a Republican you've got to fight for what matters. And I don't think that what he says is 100 percent true. Is he going to build a fat wall? No. I mean, I don't know. But I am a Republican and those are the beliefs I stand for and if someone wants to call me a racist or prejudiced that's just as ignorant as me saying I'm voting for Trump. So if you want to attack me personally, that's fine. But I do stand for the beliefs I stand for. That does not mean I want Trump, that does not mean I'm prejudiced. The way people say if you want Trump you're a racist piece of shit, I'm not. All I hear is you want Trump, you're racist.”