Saginaw in Michigan is a bellwether county. It has backed the winning candidate in every US presidential election since 2008, voting for Barack Obama twice, for Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton and, by a sliver, for Joe Biden over Trump last time round.

It was once, like the rest of Michigan, safe Democrat territory – part of a “blue wall” stretching into neighbouring Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. But decades of industrial decline – car factories closing and job losses in their thousands – have worn away some of that support.

The Guardian US writer Chris McGreal, who has spent the past six weeks in Saginaw, tells Michael Safi many still blame Democrat ‘elites’ for what has happened to their county. And in Trump they see someone promising that their prosperous past can return.

But have the Democrats done enough in the past four years to persuade some of their old voters to return? And if Saginaw goes that way, might the rest of the country too?