Julia Terruso | (TNS) The Philadelphia Inquirer

Pennsylvania has emerged as the most crucial battleground state in one of the wildest presidential races in memory — with both campaigns battling for every last vote in the state that former President Donald Trump won eight years ago by just 44,000 votes.

Trump, who lost Pennsylvania in 2020, and Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, are both crisscrossing the commonwealth in hopes of eking out a win in the potentially decisive state.

Pennsylvania is unique in many ways — it’s closely divided, and it’s geographically diverse. It is also changing, according to an Inquirer analysis of election data and interviews with dozens of Pennsylvanians that informed a series of stories about voting trends this year.

Here are six major lessons about which Pennsylvania voters could sway the race — and the future of the country.

1. Suburbs and prosperous urban areas have moved more to Democrats, while rural areas and deep inner cities are trending toward Republicans.

In recent years, there’s been a shift in the political allegiances of places once considered solidly blue or red. The suburbs have gotten more Democratic, while rural areas and some pockets of deep inner cities have moved toward Republicans. At the same time, some post-industrial pockets are a wild card — they backed Trump in 2016, but picked President Joe Biden in 2020.

Taken together, The Inquirer’s analysis showed the middle has moved left since 2016, while Trump’s vote count increased at the extremes.

The story may come down to education. Groups with higher percentages of college degree attainment shifted further toward Democrats, while those with lower post-secondary education shifted right.

What it means: The presidential candidate who wins Pennsylvania may not do so in a way we’ve seen before. Trump won the state in 2016 by carrying nearly every region except Philadelphia and its suburbs. Biden won Pennsylvania four years later by cutting into Trump’s gains in coal and steel country, as well as driving up his margin in the suburbs.

Whomever prevails in Pennsylvania this year may do so by putting together a patchwork of support we haven’t seen before.

That means both candidates are trying to compete everywhere. Trump is looking to grow among Latino voters in big and small cities. Harris will look to carry big margins in the suburbs and turn out Philly voters. And in the end, winning some of the most divided areas could prove to be most consequential.

2. The suburbs are growing and becoming more important for Democrats.

The suburbs have been trending blue for decades, especially in the voter-rich collar counties outside Philadelphia, but the once predominantly rural outer suburbs are also more recently trending Democratic. It’s where the most dramatic Democratic vote growth has happened since 2016.

Take East Brandywine Township in Chester County. New housing has popped up on former farmland in the area, and the population has swelled, precipitating a political shift. Republican nominee Mitt Romney won the township in 2012, but President Joe Biden carried it comfortably in 2020. Interestingly, the number of Republican votes remained relatively unchanged — the difference came down to more Democrats living in the area.

Suburbs outside smaller cities are shifting blue, as well. For example, in the Harrisburg metro area, Democratic vote totals grew faster than Republican votes between 2016 and 2020.

What it means: Harris and her allies may zero in on the state’s most voter-rich suburbs outside of Philly and Pittsburgh in the campaign’s final stretch. But Republicans still have an edge in majority-white suburbs statewide, and a strong performance by Trump could blunt Harris’ growth.

3. Democrats have lost some ground in Philly, especially with the working class.

Biden won Pennsylvania in 2020, but Democrats still bled more votes in Philly than in any other county, worrying some in the party this year. The biggest losses were in working-class communities, and the trend was most stark in majority Latino neighborhoods.

Democrats lost the most ground in neighborhoods where education levels were lowest and poverty rates were highest. At the same time, precincts in the city with the lowest poverty rates shifted furthest left.

In some working-class areas of the city, voters increasingly cast ballots for Trump. In others, Democratic vote totals declined largely because turnout did — fewer people showing up in blue strongholds is effectively a gain for Republicans.

What it means: Harris will undoubtedly carry Philadelphia, but the question is now: by how much? Trump and his allies are making a push in the city to lose by fewer votes than he did four years ago, and some polls suggest he could be successful.

Still, plenty of Philly voters haven’t exactly flocked to Trump — they’ve just expressed ambivalence toward the Democratic party. That means Harris has an opening to reenergize the Democratic base and try to drive up turnout in the final days of the campaign.

4. The core of Republican support remains in rural areas.

Rural voters are the second largest voting group in the state following suburban voters, and they make up the core of Trump’s support. That reflects a longtime marriage between the conservative ideology present there and the GOP, as well as a political realignment that has shifted some former Democrats rightward.

Geographically speaking, this means the widest swaths of Pennsylvania are still Trump country. Rural areas are losing population faster than other places in the state like the suburbs, but Trump still managed to increase his net vote share in rural regions in 2020 compared to 2016.

What it means: Harris may see an opportunity to cut into Trump’s support in rural areas such as Lancaster County, which has trended to the left overall thanks to gains in some of its largest towns. But its large swaths of rural areas have become even more red since 2016, and Trump may look to grow there more this year.

5. Republicans have made inroads in Pennsylvania’s small cities with growing Latino populations.

Democrats in 2020 carried Pennsylvania’s three majority-Latino cities — Reading, Allentown, and Hazleton — but Republicans gained more votes than Democrats did compared to 2016.

Reading had particularly large Democratic losses and Republican gains, and Republican votes grew by the greatest numbers in the most deeply Latino parts of the city. Between 2016 and 2020, Trump’s vote total in Reading grew by 37%. Biden logged 12% fewer votes in 2020 than 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

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Trump’s campaign clearly sees the area as ripe for growth. He held a rally in Reading last week, and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance, appeared at a town hall event there over the weekend.

What it means: Winning over Pennsylvania’s Latino population could prove pivotal. If Trump can harness his growth with the bloc in 2020 and build on it, he could improve his vote totals in these traditionally Democratic strongholds.

6. Former manufacturing towns are unpredictable and could be the most determinative places in the state.

Many of Pennsylvania’s once prosperous coal and steel towns have flip-flopped over the last three election cycles. Once Democratic strongholds, former President Barack Obama performed well in the areas, but Trump flipped many of them red in 2016. In 2020 though, Biden made gains, winning some of the ex-manufacturing towns back or at least blunting Trump’s growth there.

These Rust Belt small towns and cities, such as Johnstown and Bristol, started on a rightward shift about a decade ago that was supercharged by Trump’s populism. Though he lost the state in 2020, Trump pulled more votes out of many historically blue towns along the Susquehanna River in the Northeast and in Southwestern Pennsylvania than when he won it in 2016.

What it means: These towns could decide the election as Trump looks to shore up support with white, working-class voters and Harris tries to replicate Biden’s 2020 gains by appealing to the political middle.

Inquirer staff writers Katie Bernard, Layla Jones, Aliya Schneider, and Sean Collins Walsh contributed.

©2024 The Philadelphia Inquirer, LLC. Visit at inquirer.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

David Lauter | (TNS) Los Angeles Times

WASHINGTON — Asked at a candidate debate this week about President Joe Biden’s border policies, Democratic Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez didn’t hesitate.

“My seriousness in taking on the Biden administration’s failed border security policies” has been key to congressional action on the subject, she said. “It’s not racist to want to secure the southern border.”

A day earlier, Democratic congressional candidate Janelle Stelson was similarly direct at her debate when asked whether Biden’s border efforts had failed.

“Yes. I don’t think they acted fast enough,” she said.

“We have to secure the border,” Stelson added. “We need to send people who cross illegally … back home.”

And here’s Democratic candidate Kirsten Engel responding to a similar query at her debate:

“President Biden? Let’s be real. He was late to see what a crisis it was becoming,” she said. “We need to secure the border.”

National issue top voters’ concerns

Perez represents a district in southwestern Washington state. Stelson is trying to oust a six-term Republican incumbent in central Pennsylvania. Engel hopes to unseat a freshman Republican in southern Arizona. All three races are among the closest in the country.

Thousands of miles separate their districts, which also differ significantly in politics and demographics. But a listener tuning in to the candidates’ debates this week could easily lose track of which was which.

The late House Speaker Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill Jr. famously used to say that “all politics is local.” Four decades later, almost the opposite is true.

Local questions do still crop up occasionally: Perez and her opponent, Joe Kent, differed about plans for rebuilding the I-5 bridge over the Columbia River. Engel and her opponent, Republican Rep. Juan Ciscomani, talked briefly about water policy.

But the decline of local news, the nationalization of grassroots fundraising, the increased power of party leaders in Congress and the intense polarization of politics have combined to marginalize regional differences.

Democrats shift on the border

In their place, campaigns now turn on a small set of national issues — this year primarily the cost of living, abortion and the border. Candidates, coached by party strategists using party-financed polls that test messages for their electoral effectiveness, wind up using almost identical language to address issues.

That’s why Democratic candidates in swing districts have embraced tough border security measures and efforts to restrict asylum petitions.

Their positions borrow from the playbook that Democratic Rep. Tom Suozzi used to win a hotly contested special election in New York’s Long Island suburbs early this year, and they sharply diverge from those the party’s candidates took as recently as 2020.

That frustrates advocates for immigrants, who say Democrats have wrongly accepted Republican framing of border issues and have adopted policies that will create further hardship for migrants. But the shift matches the movement of public opinion, which has become far less sympathetic to immigrants over the course of Biden’s term.

The nationalization of congressional races and the shift on border policy are two of the lessons that jump out from half a dozen congressional debates that aired over the past week — courtesy of C-SPAN, which rebroadcasts most of them.

Extreme candidates may hinder GOP

Here’s another: The choice by Republican primary voters to embrace extremist candidates in some swing districts continues to hamper the party’s chances of holding on to the House majority.

Perez’s Vancouver-area district in southwest Washington provides one of this year’s clearest examples.

The district leans to the GOP; Trump carried the district by eight points in 2016 and four in 2020. But Perez squeaked through in 2022, defeating Kent 50% to 49%.

Kent, a former Army Special Forces officer, was a polarizing candidate who had defeated a moderate Republican incumbent in the primary that year. He took part in demonstrations on behalf of people convicted or accused of storming the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, called for Anthony Fauci to be charged with murder and espoused many of Vladimir Putin’s arguments for invading Ukraine.

This time around, national Republican leaders hoped that some other Republican would replace Kent as the party’s nominee, but he easily made his way through the state’s top-two primary, setting up a rematch with Perez.

In their debate, she highlighted his inflammatory rhetoric.

On immigration, for example, Perez used what’s now a standard Democratic line — noting that Republicans killed a bipartisan border security bill this year in deference to Trump. The former president wanted to keep the border in crisis, the better to make it a campaign issue, Democrats say.

“Joe [Kent] and his buddies, they supported killing the most conservative, bipartisan immigration bill we’ve seen in a generation,” she said.

But she went a step further, citing a town hall two years ago in which Kent appeared to agree with a right-wing questioner who called for a 20-year ban on all immigration in order to forestall the “demographic replacement that’s happening.”

Kent “wants a white majority. I want a secure border,” Perez said.

In response, Kent denied advocating a white majority, but did endorse mass deportations of immigrants in the country without legal authorization.

He also repeated his calls for ending aid to Ukraine, saying U.S. money was only prolonging the war and putting humanity “closer to World War III than we’ve ever been.”

Newscaster takes on former Freedom Caucus leader

On the other side of the country, in south-central Pennsylvania, Republicans face a similar dynamic with their incumbent, Rep. Scott Perry.

The former head of the House Freedom Caucus, Perry is one of the few members of that far-right group to represent a closely divided district, rather than one that is solidly Republican.

Since first being elected in 2012, Perry has won five times, but in recent years, his district has grown more Democratic. Republicans have lost ground in the suburbs of Harrisburg, the state capital, and across the Susquehanna River to the west, where the growing population of Cumberland County is increasingly Democratic.

As the district has changed, Perry has become an increasingly uncomfortable fit.

According to the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 riot, he took a prominent part in meetings with Trump advisers on efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. In 2022, FBI agents seized his cellphone as part of the investigation into the election plot. In 2023, after Republicans took control of the House, he was one of the 20 far-right lawmakers who repeatedly held up Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s election as speaker.

His opponent, Stelson, worked for 38 years as a television reporter and anchor for stations in the area. That has given her wide, favorable name recognition.

“The viewers have gotten to know me as a trusted, nonpartisan voice,” she said during the debate, contrasting her pragmatism with Perry, whom she characterized as “the chief obstructionist” in a Congress that has accomplished little.

The long shadow of Dobbs

A former registered Republican, Stelson says she decided to run for office after the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned Roe vs. Wade and ended the nationwide guarantee of abortion rights.

Stelson repeatedly hit Perry for his past backing of a nationwide abortion ban without exceptions.

The decision over ending a pregnancy should be left to women and their doctors, she said.

“There’s no reason why Scott Perry knows better than they do what to do with their own bodies in their most intimate decisions.”

Perry insisted that he does support exceptions for cases of rape and incest or to protect a pregnant person’s life, but added that “we need to be mindful … that there are two lives at stake here.”

“I defend, vehemently, the sanctity of life,” he said.

Similar exchanges over abortion took place in each of this week’s debates, and they highlighted how the shift in public opinion since the Dobbs decision has changed both parties’ approaches to the issue.

Democrats shift left on abortion

In the 2022 midterm elections, a backlash against Dobbs helped power Democratic victories in swing states.

At the time, many Republican candidates were caught flatfooted on the issue. This time, they’ve largely coalesced around the position Trump advocates, saying that they support the high court’s ruling and that decisions over abortion should be made at the state level, not nationally.

Democrats have sought to convince voters that those statements can’t be trusted and that if they have the majority, Republicans will try to restrict abortion nationwide.

Republicans counter that their opponents are the real extremists, saying the Democrats won’t agree to any limits on when abortions should be allowed.

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Democrats used to shy away from discussions of so-called late-term abortions — those occurring after 24 weeks of pregnancy, typically because of lethal fetal abnormalities or risk to the woman’s life. They account for less than 1% of all abortions in the U.S.

Today, Democrats are more comfortable pushing back on GOP efforts to set limits.

“There’s no timetable. Pregnancies can go bad at any point,” Engel said in her debate, setting out what is increasingly the party’s prevailing view.

“Women have lost their lives” because of state laws that restrict abortions, she said. And even when those laws have exceptions designed to allow abortions in certain circumstances, “these exceptions don’t work.”

“This is not something we leave to politicians.”

Abortion, immigration, inflation: If polls are accurate, the two sides have largely fought to a draw on those issues. On average, Democrats hold about a one-point edge when polls ask voters which party they want to see in control of Congress after this election.

Enough races remain as toss-ups that either party could win control of the House. But in our increasingly parliamentary system, where national trends have swamped local issues, here’s one prediction: Whichever party wins the White House will probably gain control of the House as well.

___

©2024 Los Angeles Times. Visit at latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.