(*This post has been updated to clarify crowd estimates and the source of the data.)
MECHANCISBURG -- What plays better in the Rust Belt - hope or despair?
Republican presidential nominee Donald J. Trump bet on the latter during a stop at a suburban high school here Monday, painting a picture of a Pennsylvania economy decimated by the collapse of its manufacturing sector and the death of coal mining.
In a fiery, hour-long speech that conjured up the Pennsylvania of years past, the Manhattan real estate mogul told a capacity crowd at Cumberland Valley High School that "the Harrisburg area is not doing too good."
"We're going to get it back. The destruction of manufacturing in Pennsylvania was caused by Hillary Clinton's policies," he said, pointing to President Bill Clinton's support for the North American Free Trade Agreement in the 1990s.
Over the last 20 years, manufacturing jobs in Pennsylvania dropped from about 950,000 to about 565,000 statewide, David Taylor, the president of the Pennsylvania Manufacturers Association, said.
"Of course, job losses were/are due to gains in productivity, new technology, jobs moving to other states and international competition," Taylor said Monday. "Not just a single factor."
But whatever the reason, the Manhattan real estate mogul kept up his drumbeat, highlighting the potency of the issue in a state proud of its lunchpail past.
Trump's campaign swing through one central Pennsylvania's richest and fastest-growing counties was also intended to counter one by Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, who barnstormed the state over the weekend.
And it could not have been more different.
In stops in Philadelphia, Harrisburg and Pittsburgh over the weekend, Clinton painted a more optimistic picture of a state that, while still lagging the rest of the nation in job-growth and other economic indicators, is nonetheless rebounding.
"I've seen what Pittsburgh has done," Clinton told a crowd at Pittsburgh's David L. Lawrence Convention Center on Friday. "I've had a first-hand look at how this great American city has reinvented itself."
"It didn't happen by people insulting each other, or people pointing fingers and demeaning each other," Clinton said, according to The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Like Scranton, which Trump barnstormed last week, Pittsburgh was similarly hard hit by the collapse of the steel industry in the 1980s. The city has since regained its footing and has a burgeoning reputation as a center for the life sciences.
The back-to-back appearances here by the two presidential nominees makes plain the importance of Pennsylvania to their respective electoral chances.
Republicans have not carried the Keystone State since the election of President George H.W. Bush in 1988.
In conversations and speeches at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland two weeks ago, GOP leaders are looking to break that 28-year losing streak this fall.
Trump hammered Clinton, denouncing her as "Crooked Hillary" more than once, even as he trained his sights on his usual cast of villains: liberal intellectuals, the Washington establishment and the media.
In heavily Republican Cumberland County, Trump found fertile ground for his message. A crowd estimated at around *4,600, according to figures provided by the state Republican Party, lined up for hours, occasionally in driving rain, to hear him speak.
How Republican is it?
In 2008, GOP presidential nominee John McCain beat President Barack Obama here 56-43 percent in Cumberland County.
Four years later, in 2012, Mitt Romney expanded that margin, beating Obama by 18 points, 58-40 percent.
David Prince, 28, and his wife, Rebecca, of New Oxford, Adams County, started lining up around 2:30 p.m. for their shot at a seat. Both were caught in that torrential downpour.
But that didn't bother David Prince, who said he worked in manufacturing.
"I'd stand in a downpour for two hours just to see Trump," he said.
Ralph Zorn, 67, a retired coal miner from Somerset County in southwestern Pennsylvania wanted to hear two things from Trump:
"I want to hear the truth and how he's going to make America great again," Zorn said.
Asked what "truth" constituted, Zorn, who now lives in Carlisle, ticked off a quick list of Trump's talking points on the stump.
"He's gonna create jobs and get our infrastructure going. He's going to build a wall and screen out all the illegals who are bringing our country down," he said.
Donna Barkley, also of Carlisle, who was sitting with Zorn, chimed in, "He's going to keep the coal mines open."
Dalton Asper, 19, of Mechanicsburg, began the primary season as a supporter of Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida.
Asper, a rising sophomore at the University of Alabama, said he started the GOP nominating season as a supporter of Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, but "Trump was my second choice."
"I just don't like mainstream Washington and an outsider would be nice," Asper said.
Trump came into Monday's rally with ground to make up both in Pennsylvania and nationally.
Trump was trailing Clinton by 7 points, 46-39 percent in a CBS News poll released Monday, in a standard post-convention bounce. The CBS poll did not include either Green Party candidate Jill Stein or Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson
Clinton had a narrower, 45-42 percent lead in a Public Policy Poll released Monday, which included both Stein and Johnson. In a direct, head-to-head contest, excluding the other two candidates, Clinton held a 4 percent lead, at 49-45.
At a campaign stop in Ohio earlier in the day Monday, Trump told a town hall in Columbus that he feared the general election might be rigged, though he gave no evidence to support it, The Chicago Tribune and other outlets reported.
Trump repeated that claim - if briefly - here Monday. But he started his speech much as he began it - with a focus on the pocketbook issue that he hopes will elevate him over Clinton.
"We are going to make great, magnificent trade deals and bring jobs back to our country, to Pennsylvania and Michigan and Ohio, and everywhere we've lost them," Trump said, without offering any specifics on how he might do so.
The crowd ate it up.
And moments later, Trump left the stage as the strains of The Rolling Stones' "You Can't Always Get What You Want," filled the room and the audience filed out of the gym.