Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton may be leading her Republican rival Donald Trump in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, but drive an hour out of Pennsylvania’s two biggest cities and the mood is very different.
Waynesburg is coal country - blue-collar heartland - and it is where the multi-billionaire from Fifth Avenue in New York City has become the unlikely hero of America’s working class.
“The only person that’s going to take the election in this area is Donald Trump,” the proprietor of the Hot Rod’s House of BBQ, Rodney Philips, told SBS.
“There’s just a heartfelt feeling in this area he’s the man for the job and that’s who they’re backing.”
The anger stems largely from the closure of Emerald Mine in November last year, leaving 300 locals, many third generation coal miners, unemployed and saddled with debt.
“When I was younger, my whole family was in coal mining”, one of the laid off miners, Dave Baer told SBS.
“Everyone around us was in coal mining... Now, it ain’t like that.”
“This is the first year that you can drive by a block of yards and see right there beside a state Democratic representative sign there is a Trump / Pence sign in the same yard.”
Around 30,000 mining jobs have been lost in America, and one year on 90 miners are still unemployed.
“Friday the 13th they said, ‘you guys are done today, you’re done, that’s it - no more mine here’.”
Dave Baer now find himself on a new coalface, working full-time at the county’s Careerlink centre, helping to reskill and retrain his former mining colleagues so they can re-enter the workforce.
In Waynesburg the unemployment rate is eight times the national average.
“When a mine shuts down, a lot of people hurt," Mr Baer said.
“I’ve got guys out there now that are losing their homes, losing their boats, losing their motorbikes, because they lost their jobs.
“They’re hurting bad and they’re calling us up every day ‘what kind of work is out there?’, when I tell them what kind of work is out there, they don’t want to hear that.”
Mr Baer said after doing such well-paid work, "it’s really hitting them hard, real hard".
"Because you go from a $70,000 minimum job to a $25,000 job, which don’t pay nothing compared to what we used to make here.
“I saw some guys make well over $125,000. There’s no jobs here that pay like that, none.”
Rodney Philips said many miners have had to take the low paying jobs, which has fed a growing resentment of politicians.
“I know a gentleman who made $120,000 last year,” Mr Philips said. “He’s driving a pizza delivery car right now, earning $20,000 – if he’s lucky.”
It’s estimated that for every retrenched miner, four local businesses are directly impacted - and his restaurant Hot Rod’s House of BBQ is one of them.
Mr Philips said there used to be 10 licensed bars in Greene County, now his is the only one left.
“They feel Trump’s their last ditch effort.
“This has always been a staunch Democratic area, the Democrats have run this area for years because of the union," he said.
“This is the first year that you can drive by a block of yards and see right there beside a state Democratic representative sign there is a Trump / Pence sign in the same yard.
“So it’s really, really changed dynamically in the area.”
Donald Trump’s slogan 'Make America great again' has mobilised the community in a way Mr Philips had never seen before.
“That’s what they want," he said.
“You can’t bring back coal. When coal’s mined, it’s gone."
“I’m sure Australia is the same as the United States, our people want to work for a living, they wanna earn their own wage, but the government has done so much to let businesses and companies leave and made it easier for other countries to bring stuff into the United States, that we don’t have the jobs now - they’ve gone.
“As bad as it is to say, we don’t build in this country like we used to.”
The ease at which multi-generational blue voters have seen and switched red, has local-level Democrats bewildered.
“All he’s said is ‘I’m gonna bring back coal’ without an explanation of how we’re gonna do it,” Greene County Commissioner and former coal miner Blair Zimmerman told SBS.
“You can’t bring back coal. When coal’s mined, it’s gone. The mines that have closed in this county were mined out.
“It’s like the steel industry in Pittsburgh, it won’t be here forever," Mr Zimmerman said.
“But when you have a job where you’re earning six figures and someone says ‘we’re gonna bring it back’ you drink the Kool-Aid, you’re on the bandwagon.
“This is a different region to the rest of the state of Pennsylvania and I really believe Hillary will win here in Pennsylvania.”
