Kent County, Michigan – home to Grand Rapids – helped flip the state to former President Donald Trump in 2016. In 2020, power passed to President Joe Biden. We asked voters in this swing county in a swing state whether their personal finances will influence how they vote.

Rob Dekker’s answer is a resounding yes. He was looking for bargains at a Daily Deals grocery store in the southern Kent County town of Wyoming, Michigan. He owned a plumbing business before retiring. Now he’s trying to use his money to pay for grocery prices.

“I’ve watched what’s happened over the last three and a half years,” he said. “Do I blame the last administration? No. It happened. I don’t think they can get us out of this.”

Dekker believes Trump would do a better job on economic policy, so he will vote for him in the fall. Dekker also voted for Trump in 2020.

Outside in the parking lot, Denise Gill was loading groceries into her car. She is also retired and lives on a fixed income. Gill wants prices to return to pre-pandemic levels and she blames Biden for inflation. Gill voted for Biden in 2020, but this year she is supporting Trump.

“It’s not someone I would take out to dinner or on a date,” she explained. “But our gas prices had gone way down; our food prices had gone way down.”

For nearly all Trump supporters I spoke to in Kent County, the economy was the most important issue. Vice President Kamala Harris’ voters, on the other hand, were mostly motivated by other motives, even if they were personally struggling economically.

Judy Walker, 56, just finished her shift at Popeyes and headed to her second part-time job at Little Caesars. Walker is trying to work full-time at Popeyes because her hourly pay is better there.

“Um, 14 and a bit,” she told me. “Well, that’s not bad.”

Walker identifies herself as Hispanic and is afraid that Trump might deport her mother, so immigration is an important issue for her.

“To be honest, business is the last thing,” she explained. “The most important thing for me is family.”

For this reason, Walker, who says she is independent, will vote Democrat in November.

That’s what will happen to 34-year-old Skyelar Kavanagh. With a rainbow shopping bag under his arm, he enters an Aldi grocery store in a suburb of Grand Rapids.

“I think my own safety as a trans and queer person is more important to me than the economy, personally as well as reproductive rights – those are honestly my most important concerns,” he said.

Both the Harris and Trump campaigns are paying a lot of attention to the issues most important to these voters, because the communities where I found them shopping, eating and working are – for the most part – swing towns in a swing county in a swing state.