Pennsylvania is ground zero for the 2020 presidential election. Currently, Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight gives Donald Trump an 11 percent chance of winning the election, but during a Sunday appearance on ABC’s This Week, he said the president should be favored to win if he carries the Keystone State.
Supporters of Joe Biden can comfort themselves that Silver gives the Democratic nominee an 85 percent chance of carrying Pennsylvania. Still, Biden’s 50.2 to 45.5 percent average of polls lead is barely outside the margin of error for most surveys.
Four years ago, Hillary Clinton was favored to win in Pennsylvania, too, and lost the state by just over 44,000 votes. With this history and this context, all eyes will be on Pennsylvania on Election Night, but how will we know if Biden has prevented Trump from pulling off a second straight upset?
If you want to know whether Biden will win Pennsylvania in 2020, you first have to understand why Clinton lost it in 2016. It wasn’t because the state’s two big cities, with their large minority populations, didn’t turn out for her. Her net advantage (108,137 votes) from Pittsburgh’s Allegheny County was 17,489 votes larger than Barack Obama’s had been in 2012, which more than canceled out the 17,062 fewer votes she netted out of Philadelphia. Considering that Obama won that election comfortably by a 52 to 47 percent margin, this should have been enough.
It also wasn’t a result of underperformance in the Philadelphia’s suburban counties. She matched Obama’s 2012 returns in Bucks and Delaware counties and greatly surpassed them in Montgomery and Chester counties.
What cost Clinton was a disastrous collapse in rural counties and a drop of support in Democratic counties in the Northeast portion of the state. There were 21 counties where Clinton performed at least ten percentage points worse than Barack Obama in 2012. If Trump is going to reprise his stunning 2016 upset, this is where he’ll need to do it.
It’ll be tough. Most of the Republican gains from 2016 disappeared in the 2018 gubernatorial election when incumbent Democratic governor Tom Wolf defeated Republican challenger Scott Wagner by a whopping 57.8 to 40.7 percent margin. Trump will have to count on a special bond with these voters.
Since mail ballots in Pennsylvania cannot be counted before Election Day and can be received up to three days late if postmarked by November 3, the Election Night totals will be incomplete and heavily tilted to in-person votes. Still, I’ll be examining these 21 counties to see if Trump has held his 2016 coalition together and has a real chance to carry the state.
I’ve sorted counties into regions to see trends in how they moved from 2012 to 2016, and then from 2016 to 2018.
In 1986, while working on Bob Casey Sr.’s successful run for Pennsylvania governor, James Carville famously quipped, “Between Paoli (in the Philly suburbs) and Penn Hills (in the Pittsburgh suburbs), Pennsylvania is Alabama without the blacks.” This central region of the state is alternatively referred to as Pennsyltucky (in a nod to its Appalachian culture) or “the T” in reference to its shape. The top of the ‘T’ runs along the border with New York State, and it’s here where the Democrats have seen the most slippage.
[For this analysis, all percentages are of the two-party vote (i.e., it excludes third parties) to make it easier to compare different election cycles.]
In the chart below, you see four “Top T” counties where Clinton did at least ten points worse than Obama’s 2012 performance. Trump held Clinton under 30 percent in all of them, and while Tom Wolf clawed back most of the lost support in 2018, he still couldn’t match the 2012 results. Susquehanna County has over a thousand active natural gas wells, making it a prime area for Trump’s pro-fracking pitch.
| TOP T | 2016 PCT | 2016 vs. 2012 | 2018 PCT | 2018 vs. 2016 | NET GAIN/LOSS (2012-2018) |
| BRADFORD | 26 | -11 | 34 | +8 | -3 |
| MCKEON | 26 | -10 | 31 | +6 | -4 |
| SUSQUEHANNA | 28 | -11 | 34 | +6 | -5 |
| WARREN | 29 | -12 | 38 | +9 | -3 |
In the stem of “the T,” Clinton fared worst in an area I refer to here as the “Central West.” Except for Cambria County (home of Johnstown), these are very low population areas. Obama didn’t do well in this region, but he earned more than 40 percent in two counties. Clinton couldn’t get even a third of the vote in any of them.
| CENTRAL WEST | 2016 PCT | 2016 vs. 2012 | 2018 PCT | 2018 vs. 2016 | NET GAIN/LOSS (2012-2018) |
| CAMBRIA | 31 | -10 | 44 | +13 | +3 |
| CAMERON | 25 | -10 | 35 | +10 | EVEN |
| CLEARFIELD | 25 | -11 | 35 | +10 | -1 |
| CLINTON | 32 | -12 | 44 | +11 | -1 |
| ELK | 28 | -14 | 38 | +10 | -4 |
Unlike in the Top T counties, however, Tom Wolf fully erased the Republicans’ gains from 2012 in the Central West.
Outside of “the T” proper, Trump made significant gains in two northwesternand two southwestern counties. In 2018, Tom Wolf not only reversed those gains but improved on Obama’s 2012 numbers in three of the four, making them all competitive.
| NORTHWEST | 2016 PCT | 2016 vs. 2012 | 2018 PCT | 2018 vs. 2016 | NET GAIN/LOSS (2012-2018) |
| LAWRENCE | 36 | -10 | 47 | +12 | +2 |
| MERCER | 37 | -11 | 45 | +8 | -3 |
| SOUTHWEST | 2016 PCT | 2016 vs. 2012 | 2018 PCT | 2018 vs. 2016 | NET GAIN/LOSS (2012-2018) |
| FAYETTE | 34 | -12 | 49 | +15 | +3 |
| GREENE | 29 | -12 | 46 | +17 | +5 |
Wolf also did a good job of patching up the damage Trump did in the Northeast. He restored Lackawanna County (home to Biden’s childhood home, Scranton) as a Democratic stronghold and flipped Luzerne back into the blue column.
| NORTHEAST | 2016 PCT | 2016 vs. 2012 | 2018 PCT | 2018 vs. 2016 | NET GAIN/LOSS (2012-2018) |
| CARBON | 32 | -14 | 44 | +11 | -3 |
| COLUMBIA | 33 | -10 | 44 | +11 | +1 |
| LACKAWANNA | 52 | -12 | 65 | +14 | +2 |
| LUZERNE | 40 | -12 | 52 | +12 | EVEN |
| NORTHUMBERLAND | 28 | -12 | 37 | +9 | -3 |
| SCHUYLKILL | 28 | -16 | 44 | +17 | +1 |
| SULLIVAN | 25 | -11 | 37 | +12 | +1 |
| WYOMING | 30 | -13 | 39 | +9 | -4 |
A straightforward way to apply these numbers on Election Night: Biden getting less than 30 percent of the two-party vote in any of the countries on the list spells trouble for the Democrat. The closer Biden comes to Wolf’s numbers, the better, and in the unlikely event that he exceeds Wolf’s performance in a county or two, that’s a sure sign of trouble for Trump.
The counties in the T and the west are important, but the Northeast has significantly more population, including some Manhattan commuter bedroom communities. As the tables show, the Northeast also has more historic swing. Luzerne and Schuylkill counties will be particularly telling, as the first can flip from blue to red and back, and the second’s 33-point oscillation between 2016 and 2018 was the biggest in the state.
On the whole, Trump will probably need to do better in these 21 counties than in 2016 to offset the Republicans’ erosion in the Philly suburbs. Trump’s challenge becomes immediately apparent when looking at the comparison between the 2016 and 2018 elections.
| PHILLY SUBURBS | 2016 PCT | 2016 vs. 2012 | 2018 PCT | 2018 vs. 2016 | NET GAIN/LOSS (2012-2018) |
| BUCKS | 50 | EVEN | 59 | +9 | +9 |
| CHESTER | 55 | +5 | 62 | +7 | +12 |
| DELAWARE | 62 | +1 | 67 | +6 | +7 |
| MONTGOMERY | 61 | +4 | 68 | +7 | +11 |
There’s a good chance Biden will also bank more votes out of Pittsburgh and Philadelphia than Clinton managed in 2016, which would make Trump’s task all that much harder.
| CITY COUNTY | 2016 PCT | 2016 vs. 2012 | 2018 PCT | 2018 vs. 2016 | NET GAIN/LOSS (2012-2018) |
| ALLEGHENY | 59 | EVEN | 68 | +10 | +10 |
| PHILADELPHIA | 84 | -2 | 88 | +4 | +2 |
If Biden can come close to Wolf’s numbers in the cities and suburbs, it will be light’s out for Trump’s chances of carrying the state. But if black turnout is disappointing or Latino voters show a little more support for Trump and Biden’s numbers there aren’t any better than Clinton’s from 2016, then it will come down to how the president is faring in his strongholds.
We’ll have to wait until all the mail ballots are counted to get a complete picture, and that may take a week or more. Yet, keeping a focus on these specific counties will help us get a sense of where the final result is headed.
You did a good job on this so I presume you will be one of the first to report in what happens in those counties,I hope I had some idea of the border across New York. I wonder though did anyone campaign up there or even in New York? Also I understand Trump had a very large rally in Butler? Anyway I’d thought up until now that the election runs through Pennsylvania. I now feel much better about it, but still nervous. So I will tune in tomorrow to see where we go. We need this blue wall.Thanks again, that’s a lot of detail.
I don’t know about New York. I do know that Biden has been in Scranton occasionally. Makes sense, as it’s his hometown. Trump has been in Erie and in the Scranton area as well. Not sure about either campaign’s presence along or near the NY border otherwise.
Off topic, except for you know, PA, but during my 9th grade education, I could recite every county in Pennsylvania. Point to the county, I could name it. At the end of the school year, I remember visiting my 8th grade history teacher, to seek some solace after Bobby Kennedy died. That summer, watching Bill Buckley & Gore Vidal and the Chicago convention, I realized I was definitely a Democrat. The day after the November election, around 10 am, it was announced over the public address system at school, Nixon had won. The Washington Post with the Watergate stories landed by my door daily during my years at UVa. Nixon resigned on my 21st birthday. Election Day 1976 was a gorgeous day in Philadelphia, I walked to the subway, that morning confident Jimmy Carter would win, I stayed up past 2 am, until it was assured. The Reagan Bush years were a blur of getting married and having kids. Sometime during the 90s I was dumbfounded when I found out there was a Clinton County in Pennsylvania. Who knew? My Biden/Harris sign here in Lancaster County lasted four weeks, it was stolen this morning. Tomorrow will be another gorgeous day in Philadelphia.
Let’s hope it’s a gorgeous day that is a harbinger of a Biden/Harris victory.
I’m in Arkansas. So far, no one’s touched my Biden/Harris signs. I think I have enough of a reputation in my neighborhood from 2016 that 1) I tend to donate enough to get signs in bulk (so stealing is sort of futile), and 2) my home office is right at the front of the house and I am a night owl. Got shoes that can get slipped on in a split second and a blunt object of one sort or another at the ready if I so much as hear footsteps on my lawn. Getting a bit of a reputation of not suffering trespassers gladly. Quite the opposite.
Was expecting sign stealing. Been a strange year in my locale. I was picking up signs a while back at a meet-up point (our local party has been in better shape) at a Hobby Lobby. Someone saw me loading signs into my vehicle as she drove past, rolled down her window and shouted at the bunch of us, “Ridin’ with Biden!” I waved and replied, “Yep, ridin’ with Biden.” She smiled approvingly and drove off. Was not expecting that. I think there are some shy Biden folks in these parts. My city is fairly Republican, as is my county, but on a map in any given year, we come across more light pink than red. Will be curious how things turn out here as well. We know how the AR electoral votes will go. I just want to know if Biden managed to bring back a few folks who had decided to abandon us a few years back. Some local elections hinge on that.
This is your home turf, so I expect you have a ton of expertise here. Looking forward to your rolling analysis as the votes are counted. Seems the Biden team has been very present in your state over the last month or so. Makes sense given the stakes. I am cautiously optimistic, but man I would love to be a fly on the wall while the candidates pore over the internal polling they’ve undoubtedly been doing. Also wonder how the various CD district polling data look. Maybe there are clues as to whether Trump is in trouble or Biden is in trouble from those data.
Another way to make my point.
I am hearing that turnout is down in many places, e.g. NC. If so, this would be generally very encouraging for Ds who got their vote in early and have big leads in most battleground states (according to polling, at least).
I’m familiar with the T because fishing. I’ve focused my contribuitions on the 10th CD this year round–I suspect the changing demographics make it a target of opportunity this round. I gotta believe the cities and suburbs will and my Friends in PA will come through.
From the bits and pieces I’ve been able to pick up online, it looks like Biden generally did slightly to somewhat better than Clinton in PA’s rural and small town/city counties, and is on target to match or exceed her margins in Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and the Philadelphia suburbs. Not a resounding defeat of Trump and Trumpism, but a defeat nonetheless, and one on which we can build.