Johnstown

The real point of this story isn't so much that rust belt Johnstown gets improperly caricatured as Trumptown despite going (barely) for Clinton, the real point is that Beltway media types don't want to acknowledge that while Trump voters aren't One Thing (and I think slicing any demographic and if they're a bit for Clinton putting them in the Clinton camp and if a bit for Trump putting them in the Trump is dumb), many of them are high income and relatively well-educated people who live in expensive suburbs/exurbs. They aren't unemployed coal miners or hicks from former steel towns or whatever.

Take Adams Township in southern Butler County. The township is about a 30-minute drive from Downtown Pittsburgh, along the well-traveled interstate I-279. While Adams, like Cambria County, is overwhelmingly white, it’s just a few-minutes drive on newly paved roads to country clubs and big-box stores in the even-more affluent Cranberry (which backed Trump). The casual-chic Hines Ward’s Tavern 86 restaurant is less than half a mile from Adams' border. Adams' median household income is $65,000, well above the Pennsylvania average, and Adams is one of the fastest-growing towns in the Pittsburgh region.

But Adams also voted for Trump, and by a bigger margin than Cambria County. The town backed Trump by a 39 point margin over Clinton (68 percent voted for Trump, 29 percent for Clinton). So why don't national publicans travel to wealthy suburbs like Adams to write stories about Trump supporters? Electorally, they provide similar support.

Those are your Trumptowns, more than rural places where not many people live (because they're, you know, rural) and more than smallish cities like Johnstown.

In addition, I'm sure most upper income Republicans around DC who pal around with Beltway journalists but who don't actually work for Trump (and even some who do) tell their more liberal friends how horrible Trump is. He's so horrible that they voted for him.