If you drive anywhere in Pennsylvania, from the Turnpike to the old U.S. routes to the dirt roads connecting small towns like Hooversville with "bigger" small towns like Somerset, you might conclude that Donald Trump is ahead in this state by double digits.

Large signs, small signs, homemade signs, signs that wrap around barns and signs that line fences dot the landscape with such frequency that if you were playing the old-fashioned road-trip game of counting cows, you would hit 100 in just one small town like this one.

It's as if people here have not turned on the television to hear pundits drone on and on about how badly Trump is losing in the state.

And it's not just visual: In interview after interview in all corners of the state, I've found that Trump's support across the ideological spectrum remains strong. Democrats, Republicans, independents, people who have not voted in presidential elections for years — they have not wavered in their support.

Two components of these voters' answers and profiles remain consistent: They are middle-class, and they do not live in a big city. They are suburban to rural and are not poor — an element I found fascinating until a Gallup survey last week confirmed that what I've gathered in interviews is more than just freakishly anecdotal.

The Gallup analysis, based on 87,000 interviews over the past year, shows that while economic anxiety and Trump's appeal are intertwined, his supporters for the most part do not make less than the average American (not those in New York City or Washington, D.C., perhaps, but their Main Street peers) and are less likely to be unemployed.

The study backs up what many of my interviews across the state have found: These people are more concerned about their children and grandchildren.

While Trump supporters here are overwhelmingly white, their support has little to do with race (though yes, you'll always find one or two who make race the issue) and a lot to do with a perceived loss of power — not power in the way that Washington, D.C., or Wall Street boardrooms view power but power in the sense that these people see a diminishing respect for them, their way of life, their work ethic and their tendency to not be mobile. (Many live within the same 8 square miles as their father's father's father.)

Thirty years ago, such people determined the country's standards in entertainment, music, food, clothing, politics and personal values. Today, they are the people who are accused of creating every social injustice imaginable; when anything in society fails, they get blamed.

The places where they live lack economic opportunities for the next generation. They know their children and grandchildren will never experience the comfortable situations they had growing up — having family next door and being able to find a great job without going to college, both of which are common traits among many successful small-business owners in the state.

These Trump supporters are not the kind you find on Twitter saying dumb or racist things. Many of them don't have the time or the patience to engage in social media because they are too busy working and living life in real time.

These are voters who are intellectually offended watching the Affordable Care Act crumble because they warned six years ago that it was an unworkable government overreach.

They are the people who wonder why President Obama has not taken a break from a week of golfing to address the devastating floods in Louisiana. (As one woman told me, "It appears as if he only makes statements during tragedies if there is political gain attached.")

Voice such a remark, and you risk being labeled a racist in many parts of America.

The Joe Six-pack stereotype of a Trump supporter was not created in a vacuum. It's real, and it's out there.

Yet, if you dig down deep into the Gallup survey — or, better yet, take a drive 15 minutes outside of most cities in America — you will hear a different story.

That is, if you look and listen.

Salena Zito is a CNN political analyst, and a staff reporter and columnist for the Washington Examiner. She reaches the Everyman and Everywoman through shoe-leather journalism, traveling from Main Street to the beltway and all places in between. To find out more about Salena and read her past columns, please visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.