Pennsylvania, the Keystone State, could well be the keystone for the election. Where it falls will likely be determined by which of its political regions turns out in the greatest numbers.
Democrats have long relied on running up the score in the state’s cities. That certainly includes Philadelphia and Pittsburgh but extends to middle-tier places that also produce large Democratic margins. Scranton, Harrisburg, Allentown, Bethlehem, Erie and Wilkes-Barre are as important to their chances as either of the two metropolises.
Dems’ chances could prove more challenging this year because of Donald Trump’s relative improvement with minority voters. Each of these places, and other smaller ones, has significant numbers of blacks, Latinos or both.
Trump ran better with these demographics in 2020 than he did in 2016, and polls have shown the former president running a few points ahead of his 2020 results. Cutting the Democratic margins in the party’s strongholds will make a Trump win much more likely.
That’s because Trump should sweep much of the rest of the state.
James Carville, Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign manager, famously quipped that Pennsylvania consisted of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh with Alabama in between.
That greatly overstates the Republican proclivity here, but the areas between the two cities remain a GOP vote sink of massive proportions.
These areas are also the heartland of the Obama-Trump blue-collar voter who’s fueled Trump’s rise.
Luzerne County, in the state’s northeast corner, is a prime example.
Barack Obama carried it by 5 points against patrician Mitt Romney, but Trump won it by 19 points versus Hillary Clinton.
Even “Scranton Joe” Biden could only whittle Trump’s margin here to 14 points. Since then, Republicans have continued to gain and look likely to pass Democrats in the voter registration rolls by Election Day for the first time in decades.
Something similar has been happening statewide. Democrats had a 685,000-person lead over Republicans in voter registration in November 2020. That shrank to a 396,000 person lead by this year’s April primary and has dropped by a further 46,000 people since then.
Interestingly, much of this is driven by party switching.
About 75,000 more Democrats and independents switched their party registration to Republican than Republicans and indies switched to Democrats between 2021 and 2023. The GOP has gained roughly another 25,000 registrants so far this year.
Both trends point to a good result for Trump, but that’s balanced by the former president’s continued weakness in the state’s educated suburbs.
This trend is particularly pronounced in the Philadelphia suburban counties — Bucks, Chester, Delaware and Montgomery — and is the main reason Vice President Kamala Harris still has a fighting chance of carrying the state.
Chester, the most educated and richest Pennsylvania county, is an excellent example of this movement. Mitt Romney narrowly carried ut in 2012, but Clinton won it by more than 9 points.
Biden turned this into a landslide 17-point win; similar dramatic moves in other educated communities are why Trump narrowly lost the state in 2020.
How each candidate fares in each region will determine who prevails.
Harris needs high turnout and margins from the traditional urban base plus continued large victories in white, upper-class suburbs.
Trump needs to recover his 2016 standing in rural and small-town Pennsylvania and cut into Harris’ margins in the cities and the well-off suburbs.
Two counties in each end of the state will provide early clues on election night.
Erie and Northampton are bellwether counties that tend to swing back and forth in close elections. Trump carried both in 2016 and lost both in 2020. If he wins them again, it will be a good sign for his campaign.
That’s in part because triumphing here opens up a host of paths to 270 electoral votes.
If he wins Pennsylvania’s 19 votes and every state he carried in 2020, he would need only 15 more to take the White House. He could get those by winning Georgia or Michigan alone or by winning either Arizona or Wisconsin and Nevada or by winning only Arizona and Wisconsin while losing the others.
In short, Pennsylvania is not only the keystone for Trump but the gateway to victory.
The savvy observer will note where the campaigns choose to visit here during the next two months.
Trump and running mate J.D. Vance can be expected to barnstorm the rural areas, but will they spend more time wooing affluent suburbanites or urban minorities?
Harris will surely spend a lot of time in the cities and suburbs trying to hold the Biden coalition together, but will she and Tim Walz spend any time elsewhere to woo blue-collar whites?
It’s too soon to say who will win this political version of trench warfare.
All that is certain is how each side views each of the state’s three regions will go a long way to determining which prevails.
