Democrats remain shell-shocked from their 2024 loss to Donald J. Trump and the Republicans. We all knew Pennsylvania would be the ballgame—Trump won it. Let’s ponder something: Pennsylvania was never on the GOP target list, yet we have won it twice in the past eight years. We also won Michigan and Wisconsin again, two other states never up for grabs for Republicans.
It’s the beauty of having a candidate, Trump, who has transformed the party into a multiracial working-class party. Democrats vowed to retake the ground lost in the Keystone State, but there are signs that Pennsylvania could become another ‘Ohio’ situation. Then again, there are also arguments that the Keystone State remains a solid swing state (via Associated Press):
The drubbing Democrats took in Pennsylvania in this year’s election has prompted predictable vows to rebound, but it has also sowed doubts about whether Pennsylvania might be leaving the ranks of up-for-grabs swing states for a right-leaning existence more like Ohio’s.
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Bethany Hallam, an Allegheny County council member who is part of a wave of progressive Democrats to win office around Pittsburgh in recent years, said the party can fix things before Pennsylvania becomes Ohio. But she cautioned against interpreting 2024 as a one-time blip, saying it would be a mistake to think Trump voters will never be heard from again.
“They’re going to be more empowered to keep voting more,” Hallam said. “They came out, finally exercised their votes and the person they picked won. … I don’t think this was a one-off thing.”
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Daniel Hopkins, a political science professor at the University of Pennsylvania, said it is hard to predict that Pennsylvania is trending in a particular direction, since politics are evolving and parties that lose tend to adapt.
Even when Democrats had larger registration advantages, Hopkins said, Republicans competed on a statewide playing field.
Hopkins said Democrats should be worried that they lost young voters and Hispanic voters to Trump, although the swing toward the GOP was relatively muted in Pennsylvania. Trump’s 1.8 percentage-point victory was hardly a landslide, he noted, and it signals that Pennsylvania will be competitive moving forward.
We’ll see what happens in the subsequent few cycles. I wouldn’t bet that Pennsylvania will become like Ohio, a former swing state that is now reliably Republican. Nothing is permanent. Years ago, there was a consensus that Florida was slipping away from the GOP. That theory is as dead as Soleimani. It’s a lofty goal worthy of investment since Republicans have proven they can win here, but it will take work, like everything in politics.
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