Trump avoids fallout from GM plant closure

Four years ago, Donald Trump was the first Republican presidential candidate since Richard Nixon in 1972 to win Trumbull County, Ohio. It was among the many Democratic strongholds he flipped from blue to red en route to the White House, and shortly after taking office he assured residents of nearby Youngstown that the region's manufacturing jobs were "all coming back."

"Don't move. Don't sell your house," Trump said at a rally in July 2017.

Less than two years later, Trumbull County lost one of its largest employers, the General Motors assembly plant in Lordstown, over Trump's protests. But results from last week's election show that voters in the area apparently didn't blame Trump for the plant's closure.

Trump not only won Trumbull County again, but he increased his margin from 6 points over Hillary Clinton to 10 points over Joe Biden. Trump won the state of Ohio with 53.3 percent of the vote, according to unofficial results, up from 51.8 percent in 2016.

Mike Yakim, a former team leader in the Lordstown Assembly paint department who now drives four hours each way to a GM plant in Michigan every week, said the closure didn't shake his support of Trump.

"You can't dump on the guy," Yakim told The Guardian for a story published last month. "GM had this plan all along."

GM sold the Lordstown plant to Lordstown Motors, a startup company that plans to make electric trucks there but with fewer employees than GM had and at lower wages. Trump showed off the Lordstown Endurance pickup at the White House in September.

GM plans to open a battery plant nearby through a joint venture with LG Chem that it has said will eventually have about 1,000 workers.