“There are Chamber of Commerce Republicans,” Frederick tells me. “They’re not real Republicans. These people here are Patriot Republicans”.

We’re standing on a street corner in Michigan, about 40 kilometres outside Detroit, at a small “Freedom Rally”. Every Sunday (Easter and Christmas aside), for the past five years, Frederick and a group of around two dozen others have been here, planting flags and holding signs. It’s the usual fare: an assortment of Trump placards and American flags, one blaring that the “Democrats cheated”, signs saying “Honk if you love freedom”. The honking is incessant. This is Trump country.

Michigan is among one of the key states both Republicans and Democrats are hoping to win. Credit: Bloomberg

But you can describe this place in other ways, too. It’s autoworker country. It’s home to the once glorious, now withering manufacturing sector that spans all those states you would have heard about endlessly if you’ve been following US elections: Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania. States whose reality is achingly captured in the common description “Rust Belt”, all steel and decay.

It’s home to a particular strand of the American working class: the people Reagan took from the Democrats in 1980. The people Obama won twice. The people Trump won in 2016, and who Biden won back in 2020. In short, the people who decide US elections.

That’s the result of America’s electoral college system, in which the president is decided by which states they can win. If this election was simply a popular........

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