The Amish Factor
November 10, 2016
THE SMALL Amish community of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania possibly played a significant role in the election of Donald Trump.
It’s a bizarre fact: a religious sect that strictly adheres to the natural law in family, favors beards and plain clothing, and so eschews modern life that it typically uses horses and buggies instead of cars, helps elect a thrice-married casino magnate who lives in an ostentatious and gilded penthouse with pagan gods on the ceilings, has sponsored beauty pageants, prefers Mercedes’ and Rolls Royces, and has bragged about his adulterous affairs. Can you even imagine Trump and an Amish farmer conversing over coffee? How about an Amish farmer in the marble lobby of Trump Tower? Or Trump in a buggy? Mrs. Trump III visiting Mrs. Stolzfus? The culture clash doesn’t just strain the imagination; it positively incapacitates it. Politics creates strange bedfellows.
Such was the 2016 election. The Amish voted for Trump, possibly without a single exception in the entire voting demographic. They are the alt-alt-right, I guess. They’re not really “deplorables” because they don’t attempt to convert others and are far too strict to attract followers from Manhattan or San Francisco. (The height of hedonism in Amish culture is a good piece of pie.) But they could become “deplorables” and even “Nazis” if this political thing keeps up.
There are about 30,000 Amish in the Pennsylvania quasi-rural county and another 5,000 to 10,000 in related Protestant sects. The Amish vary in their rules from church to church. Some are more accepting of modern technology than others. The county as a whole has a population of about 500,000. There are an estimated 64,000 Amish in Pennsylvania altogether. Trump won 137,000 votes in the county, and only won the state of Pennsylvania by an estimated 68,000 votes. If he had not won Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes, he possibly would not have won the election — or the election would remain unresolved, creating a national meltdown. (His total currently stands at 285. He needed 270 to win.)
A group of Republican, non-Amish voters — calling themselves the Amish PAC — organized to drive the Amish, some of whom were attending weekday weddings or funerals on election day, to the polls. It was such a success, with suburbanites in their minivans driving the plain people to vote, that the group has vowed to do it again in the future.
It makes sense. Despite their counter-cultural way of life, often romanticized by outsiders, the Amish have no choice but to be part of the modern world. It surrounds them on all sides. Suburban housing developments and even corporate campuses have sprung up near their farms. They use the local roads and hospitals, where they usually pay in cash. (They are exempt from Obamacare for religious reasons.) Read More »