Reliably Red Ohio County Finds Both Trump and Clinton Hard to Stomach. [View all]

DELAWARE, Ohio — Donald J. Trump is not popular in this prospering county north of Columbus. The Republican nominee’s dystopian rhetoric doesn’t resonate here. Signs that read “Now Hiring” outnumber “Trump” campaign placards.

But many residents of this reliably Republican county, which last voted for a Democratic president in 1916, simply cannot imagine voting for Mr. Trump’s Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton. And that goes a long way toward explaining why she has struggled to separate herself from Mr. Trump in this bellwether state.

“I just don’t know what I’m going to do,” said Anne Merrels, 48, who lives with her family in Powell, an old farming town that has sprouted a pair of farm-to-table restaurants at its crossroads.

The subdivisions of southern Delaware County are a world apart from the anger and decay of Ohio’s old industrial towns. Here live the beneficiaries of globalization: Ohio State University professors, software engineers and bankers who work at the hulking JPMorgan Chase building, a structure on the southern edge of the county that is as large as the Empire State Building, though considerably shorter.

Delaware County’s median household income in 2014 was $91,936, by far the highest in the state and almost twice the statewide median income. The county’s unemployment rate was just 3.4 percent in July, compared with 4.9 percent nationwide. Just as Mr. Trump has made inroads among Ohio’s blue-collar workers by promising to revive their fortunes, Democrats are hoping Mrs. Clinton can find fresh support among affluent and well-educated voters who are thriving in President Obama’s economy and may be wary of Mr. Trump’s bluster.'>>>

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/10/us/politics/ohio-hillary-clinton-donald-trump.html?