Donald Trump is going to be the next president of the United States. The billionaire businessman who never before held elected office shocked America and the world, defeating Hillary Clinton in an extraordinary rebuke to the nation’s political class after an ugly and divisive race that will go down as the most stunning upset in American history. The election is over but it has revealed a country sharply divided. McDowell is a mountain county in the Southern part of West Virginia, which became one of the strongholds of the president-elect. Trump swept West Virginia and hammered Hillary in McDowell by taking 91.5% in the republican primaries and 76% of the vote in the general elections. Hillary Clinton only received 23% of the vote in the county. The once prosperous and bustling McDowell county was established at 1858 and grew to 100,000 residents in the 1950-60’s, back when coal mines ran 3 shifts a day. Today with almost all the mines closed unemployment is more than double the national average. McDowell County ranks second from the bottom in the life expectancy of both male and female residents. Males lived an average of 63.5 years and females lived an average of 71.5 years. These images show the view of voters in West Virginia coal country.
© Dimitrios Manis Photography
