This year is different, conventional wisdom dictates, because voters are angry at their complacent political elites, at globalization and at immigrants. But since arriving in the United States from my normal reporting post in Cairo, I have often encountered other emotional notes from people I’ve met — trepidation, embarrassment, even shame — at the way the race is playing out. That is also true in places that are otherwise labeled the “forgotten America.”

On a trip to coal country in West Virginia, I found myself in Dingess, a remote valley that, even in local terms, was known as a clannish backwater. The route into the valley followed an unlit, mile-long tunnel where, it is said, local racists once fired potshots at migrant black coal workers arriving by train.

But in Dingess, not everyone hewed to the stereotypes. At my first stop, a pair of men were leaning on a gatepost, wearing khaki clothes, about to go fishing — archetypal Trump voters, I thought. It turned out they despised him.

One of the men, Jessie Elkins, 70, had served in Vietnam — “13 months in living hell” — and said he was convinced that Mr. Trump’s rash nature would lead America into an unnecessary war. The other man, his cousin James York, 40, cited Mr. Trump’s apparent fondness for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia as a potential danger. “He’s talking too much trash,” he said.

Neither man was impressed by Mrs. Clinton — “Born with a silver spoon in her mouth,” Mr. Elkins said — but they couldn’t bring themselves to back Mr. Trump. “I know one thing for sure, and two things for certain,” Mr. Elkins said. “I won’t be voting for Trump.”

Bare-knuckle campaigns are not particularly new in the United States.

In the 1828 presidential race, accusations of murder, adultery and even cannibalism could not keep Andrew Jackson from winning, and eventually becoming the face on $20 bills.