Harris’s ‘Pennsylvania Problem’ is Actually a ‘Blue Wall’ Problem
Harris’s “profile makes her an awkward fit in a closely watched, economically hard-pressed working-class region that’s historically been a locus of anti-abortion activity.”
On the eve of the 2020 election, the RealClearPolitics average of polls in Pennsylvania showed President Joe Biden leading former President Donald Trump by 1.2%. Lo and behold, Biden won the state by 1.2%.
The average had tightened significantly since Sept. 29, 2020, when Biden led by 5.7%. (For comparison, on this date in 2016, Hillary Clinton was up 2.4%. In the final read before the election, she was up by 2.1%, ultimately losing to Trump by 0.7%.)
Today, Vice President Kamala Harris is just 0.4% ahead of Trump. If polls in the state are as accurate as the final read was in 2020, she could eke out a small win. Out of the ten polls included in the RCP average, six show a tied race. In two others, Trump leads by 1 and 2 points. In the two remaining polls, Harris leads by 2 and 5 points. If we exclude the 5-point poll, which looks outlier, Trump is ahead by 0.2%.
Additionally, a poll released on Saturday by AtlasIntel, the most accurate pollster in the 2020 election cycle, showed Trump on top by 2.9%. (This poll is not included in the RCP average.)
Obviously, Pennsylvania is a must-win state for both campaigns. Unfortunately for Harris, winning the Keystone State is becoming far more challenging than it was four years ago for Biden. Perhaps she should have chosen Pennsylvania’s popular governor, Josh Shapiro, as her running mate.
According to Politico’s Charles F. McElwee, the difficulty lies in the “culturally conservative” northeastern corner of the state. He noted, “Joe Biden’s local ties and cultural roots kept him competitive” in this area. He saw Harris’s “prospects in the heavily Catholic, working-class region” as “dicier.”
Lackawanna County has the second-highest Catholic population in the state, and Harris’s chances of winning depend, to some extent, on how well she does there. McElwee pointed out that voters in this area preferred Biden, “an older, white, Catholic man with an affinity for the working class,” at the top of the ticket and implies that voters view Harris with some suspicion.
It’s the cultural dissonance with Harris, a Californian and woman of color who has spearheaded the party’s post-Dobbs abortion messaging. That profile makes her an awkward fit in a closely watched, economically hard-pressed working-class region that’s historically been a locus of anti-abortion activity.
Biden isn’t wildly popular here. But as a native son, Biden is viewed through a nostalgic lens. To many in this once staunchly Democratic region, he embodies an older iteration of the party that was closely tied to organized labor and focused on economic issues. Even though Biden moved to Delaware as a child, he remained in close contact with the city of his birth and was seen locally as a protective force against the national party’s progressive flank.
If Biden struggled in this part of Pennsylvania in 2020, how much more will Harris struggle four years later?
Harris has the distinction of being the first vice president or president ever to visit an abortion clinic, an occasion that she has boasted about. How will that fly with the folks in Lackawanna County? Pssst. It won’t.
Although she touts her “middle class” roots at every opportunity, she has no clue of the issues the average American is facing due to the inflation directly caused by the Biden-Harris administration’s policy failures. During a recent livestream with Oprah Winfrey, Harris was asked by a young couple what she would do to lower prices. Harris said one way to do that is to “bring down the cost of everyday necessities including groceries.”
She has no clue about the economy or how to fix it, and voters are starting to see that. Two recent polls of Teamster labor union members prove it. In an electronic poll, 59% of members favored Trump, compared to just 34% who preferred Harris. In a telephone poll, members chose Trump by a nearly two-to-one margin over Harris.
Union Workers Support President Donald Trump
•An internal poll showed Teamsters rank-and-file prefer Trump over Harris 59% to 34% in an electronic poll and 58% to 31% in a phone poll.—the Teamsters official neutrality is a big break in favor of Trump— Newt Gingrich (@newtgingrich) September 18, 2024
Responding to the Politico article, Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey wrote that Harris’s issues in northeastern Pennsylvania signal similar difficulties in other blue wall states. He looked at the polling and electoral histories in the states of Wisconsin and Michigan over the last three presidential election cycles. In 2016, Trump narrowly defeated Clinton in both states and in 2020, Biden narrowly defeated Trump. On this date in 2016, Clinton led Trump by 4.7% in both states, and on this date in 2020, Biden led Trump by 6.2% in Wisconsin and 5.2% in Michigan. Today, Harris leads Trump by a single point in Wisconsin and by 1.7 points in Michigan.
Based on this history, a dead heat in the polls, accompanied by a stall in momentum for Harris that has persisted for over a month, could mean that Trump is actually slightly ahead. We know her honeymoon has been over for some time and part of that is because the electorate has gotten to know her a little better. Although Harris hides from most public appearances that require her to speak off the cuff, to the extent that she does, she largely recites the same lines she memorized for the August debate or else she dodges the questions. Even liberal journalists have caught on.
Yes, Kamala has a “Pennsylvania problem.” But as Morrissey points out, she also has a “blue wall” problem. And those are the states that will decide the presidency.
Elizabeth writes commentary for The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation and a member of the Editorial Board at The Sixteenth Council, a London think tank. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn.
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Comments
So, they thought Brandon was “… an older iteration of the party that was closely tied to labor and economic issues.” Boy, were they fooled. Do you think they’ll be fooled again?
Who?
LOL. Let’s Go Brandon.
Please go, Brandon.
Someone apparently didn’t get the joke.
I certainly hope not. But I’ve been wrong before.
If it’s this close with this honest-to-God idiot barely leading over Trump, not a good sign. Country has gone off the rails.
Your point is a very good one. But, I always like to remind people that NY, IL & CA really skew things. For instance, if you removed California from the vote totals in 2016, Trump won the National Popular Vote by close to 1M-votes. California is so gigantic and ideologically lopsided, it can distort national polling in substantive ways. Also in that same year, Clinton was ‘leading’ by almost 7-points in the RCP average in mid-October and journos were wondering if she was going to carry 400 Electoral Votes. She won 227, a feat that very well may be replicated by Harris.
But, we’re definitely headed to the sectarian era of American history and that’s probably not going to end well.
I get that, but we can’t remove those states from the equation to make it seem better than it is. And Pennsylvania is not California. It’s a tossup leaning to the left, which, if we look back at 2020, saw how that turned out. I keep telling myself – the election shouldn’t be this close, and then I have to remind myself that America is not how it once was.
Not trying to be a downer about November, it’s just the reality. Might be possible for Trump to win. Unfortunately, we have too many people who prefer the “safety” of government above all else, even if they don’t understand the consequences, too many authoritarians who love shutting down dissent, and a deep state that is more than happy to please both of those groups.
“America is not how it once was”
That is true in both the figurative and literal sense. In 1988, GHWB won 58% of the white vote giving him an 8-point margin of victory which allows him to carry 40-states and 435 Electoral Votes. 32-years later in 2020, Donald Trump also wins 58% of the white vote. Unfortunately, he still loses the popular vote by 5-points which limits him to only winning 25-states and 232 Electoral Votes.
There are a lot of problems associated with this, not the least of which is the suppression of the electoral pendulum. For most of the 20th Century (and before) – when the country was far more homogeneous – there were GIANT swings of the political pendulum. This gave presidents and parties more of a mandate. People were less anxious about politics because there was a felling if an election didn’t go their way, the pendulum could/would eventually swing back to them perhaps even in the very next election, like it did in 1964 for Dems and then again back to Republicans in 1972. Those days are over because as we’ve grown more ‘diverse’ our politics have become FAR more polarized because these minority groups are much less willing to swing with the pendulum. Their loyalties have largely been fixed for the last 60-years. Until minority groups swing politically like whites have traditionally for the majority of the Republic’s history, things are going to be far more sectarian….and voter anxiety will understandably increase.
No but it’s doubtful it will matter. The Dems will find enough votes to put her over the top.
They will be fooled time and again because they can’t see the truth behind the Democrat party. It’s a party of elite Marxists.
When is it going to dawn on Democrats that abortion is no longer a federal issue?
Since blue states went forward post-Dobbs and enacted their own abortion statutes (as they should have done a half century ago instead of pretending that it’s a right enshrined in the constitution, which it never was) I’m really at a loss as to what they’re complaining about. Perhaps the abortion issue is utterly indelible in the progressive psyche that they don’t know when to quit.
When they can no longer convince swing-vote women that it is.
Watch this: A discussion between Jordan Peterson and Sarah Hill (the author of This is Your Brain on Birth Control).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzDucLhmI50
It remains potentially a federal issue, since there’s always the possibility that a Republican congress and president will pass a federal ban on abortion. That’s extremely unlikely to happen, but it’s possible, and the Dems use that as a powerful campaign tool.
I thought the whole point of the- Supreme Court decision was that this was a STATE issue.
No, the point was that the opinions in Roe v. Wade were based on vaporous arguments, that the case was incorrectly decided, and that there was no Federal constitutional basis for a right to abortion.
Therefore the status quo ante was restored and the issue went back to the states. But because there was no basis for the right to abortion, Congress could pass a law prohibiting it. Not that they ever will, and that’s all right with me.
Prohibiting or protecting it. Congress can make a law that would preempt all state laws on abortion. If the Dems truly believed what they claim to, they could have done this in 0bama’s early term, when they had 60 senators. They didn’t do it, and now they complain.
Then you thought wrong. There is nothing in Dobbs about it being a state issue. The point of Dobbs is that the constitution doesn’t protect any “right” to abortion, so it’s a matter for the legislative branch, not the judiciary. That would be both state and federal legislatures.
Democrats will never stop crowing about abortion because they know women are way too emotional over the issue. I’m thinking of that lady who said she doesn’t care how bad the economy gets as long as she has her “abortion rights” available.
It’s a perfect issue for the Democrats. They are always going to claim the GOP is going to outlaw it everywhere and large swaths of women will believe them regardless of what the GOP says.
‘Hey y’all, I’m Kamala and I grew up middle class just like most people in America…just like you both my Parents were immigrants and radical academics with PhDs and I spent my formative years in an upper class neighborhood in Canada…. did I mention that I was so middle class that I once worked at McDonald’s (while spending the summer with my Marxist Dad in LA) but don’t ask me any details or to tell a funny anecdote or remember the names of any co-workers who could verify any of this if asked…’
Easy to say that she should have picked Shapiro to lock down Pennsylvania, but it would have handed Michigan to Trump.
She’s taking a gamble she can win both states. I think she still would have been better off taking Shapiro because I just don’t see Michigan going to Trump that easily. She’d have guaranteed Pennsylvania and she could concentrate on trying to win Michigan. Now she will probably win Michigan but she’s having to fight for Pennsylvania. If she loses PA it really doesn’t matter if she wins Michigan.
Anti-abortion…..I prefer pro-life. Put away the MSM style book and write honestly, please.
And I like to use “abortion enthusiast” instead of “pro choice.”
I used to follow RCP but when I looked at the polls they were averaging, I realized that their average was only as good as the polls they used. Their polls, other than a couple, missed the last three elections by enough for them to be ignored. Atlasintel has proven to be the best followed by Rasmussen. The rest are left-wing propaganda outlets.
Republicans had better have judges and sheriffs lined up to force counting to either restart, stop or be observable on the night!
We saw that Democrats could close down counting in the battleground States with impunity while they conducted their big steal when no one was allowed to watch the counting process.
Democrats know they are in the shit and we all know that desperation makes people do crazy things, like steal an election.
Pennsylvania has mail in voting. I have been getting mail voting requests for weeks at least once a week.
My vote gets there when it gets there, tomorrow or election day it won’t matter.
But open street ballot boxes are the bread and butter of vote fraud. Any ballot filled in by recipient , relatives or past residents will get counted.
And absolutely nothing will get done about them while Democrats have their greasy fingers anywhere near the levers of power.
Which means the only way to combat ballot box stuffing is to be stuffing those ballot boxes yourself.
Remember, Democrats created these rules. All we are doing is the same as them.
This does not address the fact that the rejection of Shapiro, the ongoing Jew-hatred in the Communist/Dem Party and Israel’s frantic efforts to avoid a second Holocaust (and the ensuing nuclear war that could ultimately consume us all), will cause a considerable flip among the state’s approximately 220,000 Jewish voters.
If the Jewish vote flips from 70-30 (as it was in 2020) to even 50-50, that is a swing of 88,000 votes in a state that Biden won by less than that. And I think Harris will get less than 50% of the Jewish vote.
One can only hope but so many people vote for Democrats for the stupidest of reasons.