All signs point to a red wave as Vice President Kamala Harris faces a crossroads ahead of the 2024 election as voters increasingly look to abandon her side and shift to the right.
Longtime Democratic voters told the Philadelphia Inquirer that blue-collar, working-class Americans are not buying Harris’s game, jeopardizing her White House bid. Former Hillary Clinton voter Gabriel Lopez told the outlet that he and his peers are “tired of the same politics” and that “people actually love” former President Donald Trump.
The Democratic Party insists Trump will destroy the economy, but as Lopez pointed out, in Trump's previous four years in office, taxes were lower, and people could afford things.
Lopez, who plans to vote for Trump in November, complained that Democrats failed to keep their promises to bring down prices, adding that Trump is “at least straightforward.”
Lopez embodies one of Democrats’ biggest problems in Pennsylvania: working-class voters in Philadelphia, a once reliable voting bloc for the party, have drifted right in recent years. And they’ve been disproportionately affected by rising prices over the last several years, an issue many blame Democrats for.
It’s one of the biggest potential areas of concern for Harris, whose quest for the White House may hinge on Pennsylvania, where President Joe Biden four years ago defeated Trump by just 80,000 votes. Harris’ best opportunity to run up her vote total is in Philly, where 20% of the state’s Democrats live, but where Democrats bled more votes in 2020 than in any other county. Biden performed worse than Clinton in 41 of the city’s 66 political wards.
Jim Kohn, who voted Democrat most of his life, also argued that prices are unaffordable under the Biden-Harris Administration and that when Trump was president, “Everything was cheaper.”
Pennsylvania is considered the state that can make or break the election outcome for the candidates.
In 2016, Trump lost Philadelphia but won Pennsylvania. The shift in political party preference did not begin to change until the 2020 election. Biden performed worse in almost every voting division than Clinton did in 2016.
The former president won just 15 percent of the vote in Philadelphia in 2016. However, in 2020, he won 18 percent of the vote. This is worth noting because the city’s Democrats outnumber Republicans by 7-to-1.
Voter turnout is crucial for Democrats as Harris will need many Americans to attend the polls if she hopes to take Pennsylvania. A recent Philadelphia Inquirer/ New York Times/ Siena College poll found that although Harris performed better than Biden did earlier in the city, enthusiasm to vote was low.
The outlet also noted that the Democratic Party lost a considerable number of voters in the state in 2022, especially in Philadelphia, because of its size. By the end of 2023, Republicans gained over 10,300 registrants in the city, while Democrats only accumulated about 9,800.