COLUMBUS, Ohio — Peg­gy Lehn­er, a Repub­li­can state sen­a­tor in Ohio, doesn’t sug­ar­coat what she has seen hap­pen to sup­port for Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump in her sub­ur­ban Day­ton district.

“It hasn’t ebbed. It’s crashed,” said Lehn­er, who is not seek­ing reelec­tion in the dis­trict of work­ing-class and white-col­lar com­mu­ni­ties the pres­i­dent won com­fort­ably four years ago. “He is real­ly doing poor­ly among independents.”

Trump’s chances for a sec­ond term rest heav­i­ly on being able to main­tain the mar­gins he won by in 2016, par­tic­u­lar­ly in sub­ur­ban areas. He plans to cam­paign out­side Tole­do on Mon­day, as lib­er­al Supreme Court Jus­tice Ruth Bad­er Ginsburg’s death stokes ques­tions of whether the sud­den court vacan­cy would ener­gize more sub­ur­ban vot­ers who sup­port abor­tion rights or social con­ser­v­a­tives in small-town and rur­al areas who oppose them.

Repub­li­can law­mak­ers and strate­gists in Ohio say they are see­ing research that shows a near-uni­form drop in sup­port from his 2016 totals across every sub­ur­ban region of the state.

They say that Trump, who won Ohio by 8 per­cent­age points in 2016, main­tains a yawn­ing advan­tage in more rur­al areas and small towns. Still, Repub­li­cans are con­cerned that if he is los­ing bad­ly in sub­ur­ban areas in Ohio, it is a sig­nal that Trump’s hold on oth­er states in the indus­tri­al heart­land that deliv­ered him the pres­i­den­cy may be in peril.

“The mil­lion-dol­lar ques­tion becomes, how does that trans­late in Wis­con­sin, Michi­gan and Penn­syl­va­nia?” said Cor­ry Bliss, a Repub­li­can strate­gist who man­aged Ohio Sen. Rob Portman’s 2016 reelec­tion cam­paign. “It trans­lates into prob­a­bly not a very good night.”

Ohio has long been a bell­wether. No Repub­li­can has won the White House with­out car­ry­ing the state since the advent of the mod­ern two-par­ty sys­tem, and no Demo­c­rat has since 1960.

Trump is far­ing worse than four years ago in com­mu­ni­ties in essen­tial­ly all sub­ur­ban areas around Ohio, from its major cities to its sev­er­al mid-size metro areas, more than a half-dozen Repub­li­can oper­a­tives track­ing races across Ohio say.

Trump has slipped in sub­urbs to the east and west of Cleve­land, where he nar­row­ly edged Demo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­nee Hillary Clin­ton in 2016, they say. In the blue-col­lar sub­urbs of Youngstown, where Trump won by dou­ble dig­its, the same appears to be true.

In afflu­ent sub­urbs, such as Dublin north­west of Colum­bus, 2012 GOP nom­i­nee Mitt Rom­ney won by almost 20 per­cent­age points. Four years lat­er, Trump nar­row­ly lost to Clin­ton. Less than two months before the 2020 elec­tion, Repub­li­cans were con­cerned about signs the trend in Dublin has con­tin­ued, accord­ing to sev­er­al GOP oper­a­tives fol­low­ing leg­isla­tive and con­gres­sion­al races.

There is debate among state Repub­li­can strate­gists about how many new vot­ers there are left to lift Trump in rur­al and small town Ohio.

For­mer Ohio Repub­li­can Par­ty Chair­man Kevin DeWine, a sec­ond-cousin to Gov. Mike DeWine, said, “I just don’t see him get­ting more votes.”

But vet­er­an Ohio GOP strate­gist Doug Preisse coun­tered, say­ing, “I per­ceive a com­men­su­rate inten­si­fi­ca­tion in the sup­port for Trump in small towns.”

There is less debate in oth­er states. Penn­syl­va­nia Repub­li­cans say across the long­time GOP strong­hold of Chester Coun­ty west of Philadel­phia, for instance, Trump has slipped as far as he has in Ohio’s sub­urbs, though in more pop­u­lous towns and in a state he car­ried by few­er than 45,000 votes.

For­mer Penn­syl­va­nia Rep. Ryan Costel­lo, a Repub­li­can, said that the sub­ur­ban elec­torate is rapid­ly diver­si­fy­ing in ways that hurt Trump, espe­cial­ly among young fam­i­lies and among those con­cerned about the coronavirus.

“I think Trump has proved to be the accel­er­ant,” said Costello.

Hillary Clin­ton car­ried Chester Coun­ty by almost 10 per­cent­age points, the first Demo­c­rat to win there since Lyn­don John­son in 1964. Chester is also steadi­ly grow­ing, with a pop­u­la­tion of about 525,000, the fourth largest in the state.

“I think that there is a high­er like­li­hood at this moment in time that Trump per­forms worse in the sub­urbs,” Costel­lo said. “It’s his tone. It’s the chaos. Per­haps a com­bi­na­tion. But cer­tain­ly the pan­dem­ic, the mis­man­age­ment of the pandemic.”

But there are oth­er more nuanced sub­ur­ban con­cerns for Trump in Pennsylvania.

Just west of the state cap­i­tal, Har­ris­burg, Cum­ber­land County’s rapid devel­op­ment is diver­si­fy­ing the Cap­i­tal City’s long­time Repub­li­can-lean­ing sub­urbs. The com­bi­na­tion of growth and declin­ing sup­port for Trump gen­er­al­ly across sub­urbs has hurt the pres­i­dent in south-cen­tral Pennsylvania’s com­pet­i­tive 10th Con­gres­sion­al Dis­trict, where Trump won by 9 per­cent­age points in 2016, said Ter­ry Madon­na, direc­tor of the Cen­ter for Pol­i­tics and Pub­lic Affairs at Franklin and Mar­shall Col­lege in Lan­cast­er, Pennsylvania.

A cen­tral ques­tion is whether Trump can, as his cam­paign pre­dicts, spur even more sup­port than in 2016 from rur­al vot­ers in Penn­syl­va­nia, Michi­gan and Wisconsin.

“Trump is lead­ing in these areas but nowhere near by the per­cent­age he won them by in 2016,” said Madon­na, who has con­duct­ed polls in the state for more than three decades.

Repub­li­cans have sim­i­lar con­cerns about sub­urbs in Michi­gan, notably in Oak­land Coun­ty, Detroit’s more upscale north­west­ern neigh­bor and Michigan’s sec­ond-most pop­u­lous coun­ty. Democ­rats have con­sis­tent­ly car­ried it, though Repub­li­can George W. Bush came very close in 2000 and 2004, while Mitt Rom­ney was com­pet­i­tive in 2012.

Trump did worse there than any Repub­li­can in the past 20 years, with the excep­tion of John McCain in 2008.

But Trump appears less con­cerned about shoring up those loss­es, and is instead min­ing rur­al, small-town and work­ing-class regions in all three states for more of the white con­ser­v­a­tive base that pro­pelled him to office.

Trump cam­paigned near Bay City, Michi­gan, last week, a strug­gling for­mer auto­mo­tive man­u­fac­tur­ing city on Lake Huron where he won in 2016, after Oba­ma had car­ried Bay Coun­ty twice.

Like­wise, Trump has lost sup­port in the pop­u­lous sub­urbs of south­east Wis­con­sin since 2016, accord­ing to the Mar­quette Uni­ver­si­ty Law School poll. And instead, he has been cam­paign­ing in blue-col­lar Oshkosh and the Wausau area, far north of the Repub­li­can epi­cen­ter encir­cling Milwaukee.

Wis­con­sin Repub­li­cans pro­mot­ing leg­isla­tive can­di­dates in typ­i­cal­ly GOP-lean­ing sub­urbs of Ozau­kee Coun­ty north of Mil­wau­kee and Wauke­sha Coun­ty to the city’s west warned this month that “Repub­li­cans should be wor­ried because Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump is cur­rent­ly under-per­form­ing in the dis­tricts,” accord­ing to GOP web­site rightwisconsin.com.

“It’s a com­bi­na­tion of blunt­ing the depar­tures in the sub­urbs and juic­ing the rur­al areas,” said John Sel­l­eck, who ran Romney’s 2012 Michi­gan cam­paign. “But can he make up the lost sub­ur­ban votes elsewhere?”

That was his for­mu­la for win­ning Ohio four years ago. He received the high­est or sec­ond-high­est per­cent of Repub­li­can votes of any can­di­date since 1980 in 60 of Ohio’s 88 coun­ties, accord­ing to state vot­ing data com­piled by Mike Daw­son, a pub­lic pol­i­cy con­sul­tant and cre­ator of ohioelectionresults.com.

While GOP strate­gists say Trump can make up the sub­ur­ban loss­es with new vot­ers, Mar­quette University’s polling direc­tor Charles Franklin sees no evi­dence in research track­ing Trump’s sup­port this year to sug­gest new vot­ers are choos­ing him.

“He def­i­nite­ly needs to ramp it up and deliv­er on what the cam­paign is talk­ing about, big increas­es of turnout of Trump vot­ers in regions oth­er than the sub­urbs,” Franklin said. “It’s not in the polling now.”

Beau­mont report­ed from Des Moines, Iowa. Asso­ci­at­ed Press writer Marc Levy in Har­ris­burg, Penn­syl­va­nia, con­tributed to this report.