One of the most important areas is the so called Rust Belt that's America's old industrial Heartland in the north east of the country.

Four years ago, the state of Pennsylvania was unexpectedly won by Donald Trump.

It was the first time the state had voted for a Republican candidate in almost 30 years.

Nick Bryant reports now on how Pennsylvania could play a critical role in this year's election on ugly American Election is being forced amidst this beautiful American landscape what often feels like a shared continent occupied by warring tribes.

This is the Trump Pass in rural Pennsylvania, a site of pilgrimage for a political base that often exhibits a near cult like devotion, a shrine decorated with the iconography of the modern day American right.

Its owner, Leslie Rossi, points tohave.

The Republicans have registered more than twice as many new voters in Pennsylvania as the Democrats, a portent of victory.

They love what President Trump has done that he kept his word that he kept his promises that he did all the things he said or tried.

Thio, Um he's, you know, the people's president, and they get that This is the post industrial landscape that provided the seed bed for the Trump presidency.

The rusting steel works became echo chambers for the slogan Make America Great Again.

But this year he hasn't come up with a ringing phrase that's reverberated through these valleys.

The 2020 Election is not a rerun of the 2000 and 16 election.

Donald Trump is not an insurgent.

He's the incumbent.

He has a record to defend.

And then there's that question that often decides presidential contests.

Is the country better off now than it was four years ago?

Some plants have seen new investment with the steel industry, now employs almost 2000 fewer workers than it did four years ago, largely as a result of the Trump trade war.

This isn't coming back.

Places like this will never come back.

Um, this style of manufacturing that existed throughout the 20th century is gone.

Has Donald Trump revived these communities?

Not in the way that these communities wanted to be revived?

Um, manufacturer manufacturing hasn't come back.

Steal hasn't come back and it won't.

The political rationale for Joe Biden's candidacy was that he was the Democrat best place to win back white voters in the Rust Belt.

It's former Trump supporters like Chuck.

How Weinstein in 2020.

I think it's a perfect storm for Joe Biden because I think people were tired.

They won't see normalcy back in this country.

They want to see decency.

They want to see things, hatred, stop.

They want to see this country united.

And I think all that together, um, is gonna bring Joe Biden presidency.

Many voters here still cling to the nostalgic nationalism that Donald Trump offers and view him as a president of American resurgence.

But are there enough of them in these broken communities to win him four more years?