The four-state region is the country’s least educated and least well paid, according to federal jobs data.

Politically, the region has emerged as a bedrock of support for billionaire real estate mogul Trump, who has hammered home his pledge to return America to “winning” ways versus foreign competitors and foes.

In polling conducted for Reuters by Ipsos, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee and Kentucky ranked among Trump's top seven states nationally, with more than 40 percent of Republicans and independent poll participants backing him.

Alabama and Tennessee vote on March 1 on “Super Tuesday”, along with 13 other states and territories in the heated race to select the Republican Party’s presidential candidate. Kentucky holds a Republican caucus on March 5 and Mississippians vote in their party primary on March 8.

Crisis Hit Hard

The 2007 to 2009 economic crisis fell particularly hard on Mississippi and neighboring states. The number of jobs fell faster than in much of the rest of the country, climbed back more slowly, and as of last year remained more than 200,000 short of where it was before the crisis, federal data show.

Economic and cultural dislocation runs strong, whether it's anger over Washington's regulatory reach into industries like coal mining, the perceived threat to conservative values on issues like same-sex marriage, or the conviction that the economy no longer works for average Americans.

A nation-leading 32 percent of the adult population in the four-state region has only a high school degree, a problem at a time when the fastest job and wage growth is in occupations that require a bachelor’s degree or more. Since 2000, jobs available in Mississippi for those with only a high school degree fell five percent, according to a Reuters analysis of federal occupational data. 

Between 2000 and 2014, median household income fell nearly 12 percent in Mississippi, about twice as fast as the overall U.S. decline, adjusted for inflation. Income among white households fell slightly more than 12 percent, compared to a decline of less than five percent for all whites nationally.

"We’re shipping out all the work and bringing in all the people that don’t want to work,” said Walter Wright, 46, who owns a real-estate company in Hurley, Mississippi. He said he supports Trump because of his tough build-a-wall approach to stopping illegal immigration and because “he is angry.”