Adam Wren is a contributing editor at Indianapolis Monthly.

TERRE HAUTE, Ind.—A late- model Cadillac Escalade—in a paint hue resembling Donald Trump’s coiffure and sporting a large “Trump-Pence 2016” decal—rolled into the parking lot of Pizza City around lunchtime here on a cool October Wednesday. The doors opened, and out stepped the top three members of Trump’s Indiana campaign: Vice Chair and Communications Director Tony Samuel, Chairman Rex Early and State Director Suzanne Jaworowski.

They were here to meet Trump supporters at a rah-rah, get-out-the-vote powwow. It was the first day of early voting in Indiana, and Trump’s Indiana team had come to Vigo County to rally the faithful—and, if they were lucky, maybe swing some late deciders in the swingiest of swing counties. For the second time in less than a month, the team had traveled to the nation’s “most solid bellwether county,” according to the Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections, as part of their “Early for Trump” effort to “fire up the Trump-Pence Indiana Train to make Indiana the first state in the Trump-Pence victory column on November 8th,” a news release before the event announced.


Vigo County is as good a bellwether as any place in America. It’s voted for the winning presidential candidate all but two times the past 128 years, and hasn’t missed since 1952, choosing neighboring Illinois’ Adlai Stevenson over Dwight Eisenhower—and even then it missed by a margin of only .07 percent. And signs are, in 2016, Vigo, situated in the home state of his running mate, Gov. Mike Pence, is firmly in the Trump column.

But on this day inside Pizza City, as members of a France 2 television crew hovered boom mics over the proceedings, Trump’s Indiana team wasn't playing offense, but defense. A dour mood filled the air. Only days before, video had surfaced of their candidate bragging about his prowess in assaulting women, and the subject had overtaken the matter of early voting as the topic of conversation. Polls weren’t looking as rosy as they once had, either. In August, Trump led Hillary Clinton in Indiana by 11 points. But only a week or so before today’s visit, a WTHR/Howey Politics poll in the field from October 3 through October 5 had Trump up with only a 5-point margin in Pence’s own backyard, 43 percent to 38 percent. Meanwhile, a Monmouth University poll released a few days later would show Clinton trailing Trump here by a margin of 4 points.

All was not well in Importantville, as Trump himself had dubbed the state during Indiana’s decisive primary. As political gossip around Terre Haute had it, Trump’s comments about women had caused a surge of female voters registering in the waning hours before early voting began. Could Trump lose Vigo County? And if he did, that could mean, well, he couldn’t lose here, could he? That was the question that hung in the air, in the background of the political chatter that could be heard on sidewalks and in libraries and the town’s bars during the time I spent in the county last week.

And then there was this bit of data: At a drive-through voter registration event at the Vigo County Courthouse the day before, about 150 voters registered. I spoke to one volunteer who worked the event, and she told me that 90 percent of them were women who planned to vote for Clinton.

Among them was 73-year-old Bertha Pearman, a Terre Haute resident who had registered to vote for the first time in her life that day. Spurred by Trump’s letter-to-Penthouse-like remarks, Pearman had had enough, and planned to vote for Clinton. Earlier this month, her husband passed away from an aneurysm, but her son, in town from his home in Maryland to help her sort out final wishes and clean the house, had driven her to the courthouse to register to vote. Yes, there were pressing decisions to be made and affairs to be settled. But voting in this election mattered, and she would be darned if she weren’t going to vote for the first woman for president. She had waited all this time to vote because she never felt like her vote counted. Not this year, though. And so it was off to the courthouse.

“With the things that come out of Trump’s mouth, it makes you sick,” said Pearman, a former retail clerk and the mother of three children. “It’s pretty sad that you have to censor the debates from our children. I don’t want someone like that running the country.”

Just minutes before the Trump team had arrived at Pizza City, the day after Pearman registered, they had stopped by the courthouse to greet early voters. At times, it was downright awkward to watch them interact with voters.

“Did you vote for Trump?” Samuel asked a man and his wife, who looked to be in their 50s or early 60s, as they walked out of the courthouse, fresh from the voting booth.

“No, we’re not that crazy,” the man said, chortling.

“I shouldn’t have asked,” Samuel said under his breath, as a reporter and camera crew from France 2 made a beeline to the couple, trying, unsuccessfully, to interview them.

A volunteer at a voter registration event at the Vigo County Courthouse, above, estimated that 90 percent of the 150 people who registered one day were women who planned to vote for Clinton. | M. Scott Mahaskey/POLITICO

Thirty minutes later, inside Pizza City, as Team Trump for Indiana met with about a dozen members of the local Pachyderm Club—a group of Republicans and Trump supporters—the mood was downright funereal. It had the feeling of a group of battle-weary survivors huddling around a campfire to count their losses while bracing for what the next day might bring. While the official purpose of the meeting was to get out the vote early, it quickly turned into a Trump supporter group-therapy session.

“Don’t let the media sway you,” Jaworowski told those gathered. “Do not let the Democrats sway you. We have to be united right now. One team. Solid together. And not waver for a moment.”

But here, in Importantville’s most important county, just weeks before Election Day, female voters seem to be doing exactly that: wavering.

***

When I first visited Vigo County last November, over the course of two days during the then-heated Republican primary, Vigo appeared to be all aboard the Trump train. The first votes wouldn’t happen for another five months, when Indiana’s May primary rolled around, but Trump was already galvanizing the voters I spoke to, who said Trump alone could turn around the country. And indeed, when primary day came, he won the county with 63.5 percent of the vote, collecting 8,541 votes, more than doubling his closest competitor, Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who garnered 28.5 percent. Trump also pocketed more votes than both Clinton (who had 44.8 percent, or 6,045 votes) and Democratic primary winner Senator Bernie Sanders (who had 55.1 percent, with 7,434 votes).

Now, it’s the general election, for which the people of Vigo have earned their reputation as the Wizards on the Wabash River. Though it’s a typically a stronghold for Democrats—it’s the birthplace of Evan Bayh and labor leader Eugene Debs, after all—Vigo has also voted for Republican presidents. With its uncommon mix of urban and rural settings; a stable, mostly white population of factory workers and union members; and several college campuses, this county, situated off of U.S. Route 40, has offered itself as a kind of petri dish of presidential elections since 1888. Vigo residents have selected the winning candidate in every election save 1908 and 1952. What’s more, its final vote total has mirrored the national result within less than a percentage point, about 0.9 percent. As a result, since last November, reporters and documentarians from all over the world have descended on this county seat to take the temperature of voters. Since last year, journalists have visited from the Times of London, Reuters, NPR, BBC, CNN, MSNBC and Al Jazeera English, according to an official tally maintained by the Terre Haute Tribune-Star. “Vigo County is kind of a big deal,” wrote editor Mark Bennett in a recent Tribune-Star article. “The world wants to know what people here think.”

At the time, Randy Gentry, the Republican county chairman, couldn’t procure enough Trump yard signs to keep people happy. Gentry told me he was undecided. But months later, at a Trump rally at the Indiana State Fairgrounds in April, I spotted Gentry as he headed backstage to shake Trump’s hand. Gentry had fallen in line with the voters in his county. Ohio Gov. John Kasich's team had tried to recruit him, but the kind of enthusiasm he was seeing for Trump was remarkable.

“Normally, as a chairman, I wouldn’t endorse,” Gentry told me later that April night. “It’s not my normal thing. But as a chairman, I’m tasked with building the party, bringing new people into the fold, and I just felt, there was nobody else that was going to do that. Donald Trump is way out in advance. The bottom line is that the people that he’s got fired up, I want those people to get involved. I have spent the last week … a very, very short period of time, I had well over 1,000 yard signs requested. I did an event Saturday, and handed out 135 yard signs in 30 minutes at a shopping center. I never had people line up for yard signs.”

A week later, he was at a Trump rally in Indianapolis, meeting the man himself. “I gave him a high-five. He took a picture with me, did a thumbs-up. I said, ‘You know what, I want a high-five.’” Did he mention the Vigo County connection? “He did not, but I’m told he’s been briefed on it.”

Fast forward to today, and Trump’s Indiana team says its candidate is well aware of Vigo County’s role as a bellwether—and monitoring things there (Trump retweeted Politico Magazine’s original article on Twitter late last year). Days after I spoke with Gentry, Trump visited Vigo, filling the Indiana Theatre. (Clinton herself visited Vigo County in March 2008, during the state’s uncharacteristically contested Democratic primary.)

But since those heady primary days, enthusiasm for Trump seems to have waned a bit. As Trump’s Indiana team stood outside the courthouse last week, beneath a balcony from which then-Senator John F. Kennedy had delivered a speech on October 5, 1960, only a dozen early voters streamed by them and the five Trump-Pence yard signs they popped in the ground. And only a handful revealed to Trump’s three Indiana campaigners that they were in fact voting for their candidate.

M. Scott Mahaskey/POLITICO

“I’m voting for Trump,” said 78-year-old Darlene Adcox, as she walked into the courthouse. “Nothing can change my mind. There’s too much pussyfooting around in Washington. … Obama has no guts.”

Asked about recent revelations about Trump’s past with women, a serious look spread across her face. “That didn’t sound too well,” she conceded.

The turnout on early voting has been low (2,382 ballots have been cast so far). “It wasn’t as huge of a turnout as we thought,” Samuel said. But the team remains optimistic about how the bellwether county will vote on November 8. “We feel that we’re winning in Vigo County big, and that he’s going to be the next president,” Samuel said, citing the county’s unemployment rate as a factor that would figure in Trump’s favor.

By the sheer crude metric of yard signs alone, Samuel seems to be right. In fact, the only Clinton sign I saw in Terre Haute city limits was positioned outside the Vigo County Labor Temple. For Trump to win here, he’ll have to win over Democrats and independent voters, who make up a sizable chunk of the electorate. So far, he seems to be succeeding. One Trump supporter with whom I spoke, Dennis Wilkey, 65, a retired sales representative for Kraft Foods, said Trump is doing well even with the Democrat friends with whom he has coffee at Burger King most mornings. “We’re giving away Trump signs out, and the Democrats are asking for them,” he told me. He said he’s handed out at least 300 to a range of voters within the past week.

Despite all the attention Vigo has received this cycle, there’s a chance that the unthinkable could happen, and, like everything else in its path, the 2016 election cycle might chew up Vigo’s long-cherished status. The county could break its streak of picking the winning president, says Matt Bergbower, a professor of political science at Indiana State University, one of several universities in town.

“I’m concerned that the bellwether hypothesis will fail this year,” Bergbower told me. In other words, Vigo, he thinks, will still narrowly go for Trump, but Clinton will win the presidency. It could be just a fluke—yet another strange thing in a strange year. But it could also reveal a changing America. A stable population of white voters, even if at different social strata, is no longer representative of the nation at large. According to census data, 88 percent of Vigo’s residents are white, and median income is $40,692, compared with approximately 77 percent and $53,046 nationally.

The county’s lack of diversity—demographically and economically—could mean the county hasn’t kept pace with demographic shifts nationwide. The same forces that once made it a bellwether could now strip it of that status.

***

Back inside Pizza City, the Trump supporters tried to find common cause amid the doom. But it continued to escape them.

Shortly before the event began, Early, Trump’s state chairman, answered his phone. Several minutes passed.

By the time the call ended, Early’s face ashened.

“Are you OK?” a Trump for Indiana volunteer asked him.

“Eric said he didn’t know if he was going to vote for Trump or not,” Early replied. On the other end of the phone was Early’s wife, who had called to tell him that Indiana’s Republican gubernatorial candidate, Lt. Gov. Eric Holcomb—whom Pence practically anointed as his successor after bailing from his tight reelection battle with Democrat John Gregg in July—had told reporters that he was uncertain whether he could vote for the Republican ticket. For the second time in five days.

“He said that?” the volunteer asked.

Early nodded.

Just then, Jaworowski, Trump’s state director, came by the table. “Having fun yet?” She asked Early. He was not.

“Oh, I’m a little pissed. Eric said again that he doesn’t know if he can vote for Trump. Well, I don’t know if I’m going to vote for Eric or not. Maybe I’m going to vote for John Gregg,” said the former chairman of the Indiana Republican State Committee. (When he saw I was taking notes, he told me that this was a vain threat; he had already voted for the Republican ticket back in Indianapolis early that morning.)

Jaworowski gave her speech. But her usual gusto was gone. Her speech to spur on early voting took on more existential matters. “I didn’t like it,” she said of Trump’s comments in the Access Hollywood video. “But I’m not going to talk about it.”

But in interviews, that’s all Trump supporters, six of them women who donned pink “Women for Trump” T-shirts after the event, wanted to talk about.

Before Jaworowski could finish, a woman raised her hand to make a comment. Lisa Reed, 58, a landlord, said she wasn’t bothered by Trump’s comments, especially compared to the specter of a Clinton presidency. “She’s for everybody else but my gender and my race,” she said. But she admitted that if a man said to her what Trump had said about women, she wouldn’t take it sitting down. “I got a gun. I’ll shoot your ass.” Even Trump? “Even Trump,” she said.

“And if Trump is president, you’ll still have your gun,” Jaworowski interjected. People nodded.

Afterward, Reed told me that she wasn’t against the idea of a female president. “I’d love to see a woman president—I’d just like it to be a real woman,” she said. Did she think Hillary Clinton was not a real woman? “If you can’t satisfy a man enough to keep him home, than you are not a real woman. I always thought the best female president would have been Condi Rice,” she said, apparently unaware that, days earlier, in the wake of the Access Hollywood video leak, the former secretary of state had called for Trump to withdraw. (“Enough! Donald Trump should not be President,” Rice posted on Facebook.)

Women for Trump aside, though, rank-and-file female voters with whom I spoke across town seemed generally turned off by Trump.

The night before the gathering at Pizza City, at a League of Women Voters candidate forum, I could find only one female Trump supporter. “I’ve worked with a lot of men, and I realize how men are,” Laura Wilkey, 65, told me. “It’s crude language, but he wasn’t in mixed company.” (At another forum later in the week, the BBC broadcast a debate between Trump’s Indiana team and two Clinton supporters from a local watering hole. Clinton’s side of the room at the forum sat substantially more women than Trump’s side did.)

“This election is insane,” Sue Bentrup, an 80-year-old retired nurse who planned to vote for Clinton, told me. “I feel sorry for the Abraham Lincoln Republicans. I’m nervous.”

That night, the streets of small-town Terre Haute were all but dead. Outside of a pizza joint, I met three women in their 60s who were saying goodbye after a ladies’ night out. Two were Trump supporters who wouldn’t talk on the record about their support for the candidate. They said goodbye to their friend and made a beeline toward their car, leaving 65-year-old Gwen Hicks behind. She told me she played golf with her two friends, with whom she had agreed not to talk about politics. Her outspoken frustration with Trump was part of the problem. “If he was standing there on fire, I wouldn’t vote for him,” she told me, somewhat inexplicably.

“It was very typical of him,” Hicks said, as she discussed recent bombshell claims about Trump’s past. “With corn, they say the cream rises to the top. Crap does, too.”