Is Pennsylvania really in play for Trump?

Come to think of it, is that Senate race actually close?

Oct 23, 2024

Political prognosticators run in two basic lines: those who look at everything through a fresh lens and those who are realist enough to ask the obvious “has anything changed?”

The former tend to analyze elections as if it’s a new TV show, play, or film; whereas the realists recognize that plotlines are as old as Aescylus.

Let’s take a gander at 2022. Pennsylvania had a governor’s race, which wasn’t really close, and an open Senate race that was fairly tight (compared to the Shapiro blowout of Mastriano).

New Jerseyan Mehmet Oz (aka Dr. Oz of television fame) won the GOP primary beating out a sizable field of competitors, including David McCormick of Connecticut, who’s running against incumbent Senator Bob Casey this year. It seems that the Pennsylvania Republican Party picks wealthy carpetbaggers for statewide elections nowadays. In case you’re wondering, both uber-rich Dr. Oz and Dave McCormick bought themselves Pennsylvania homes with the same effort that goes into purchasing a Primanti or a Cheesesteak for regular folks.

Dr. Oz lucked out when the Democrats picked Lt. Governor John Fetterman, a leftist populist. The luck was Fetterman having a rather serious stroke in 2022. Unfortunately for Oz, the Dobbs decision and the fact that Fetterman, like Trump himself, had developed a formidable army of political loyalists in Harrisburg and Western Pennyslvania cost Oz the race.1

Fetterman won 51.25% to 46.33%.

The map, however, made the contest seem sexy.

The blue on the map2 is where most everyone lives, the red areas are rural and rich with guns, God, and open spaces — just not a lot of voters.

Of course, Trump did better in 2020. After all, Biden only won the state with only 50.01% to Trump’s 48.84%. Tighter, but the map3 didn’t change fundamentally. It just got bluer in the blue areas post-Dobbs.

By the way, Biden’s raw vote margin was just over 80,000. Fetterman's margin, with the Dobbs decision at his back, was over 283,000 votes.

The belief that Pennsylvania is a state filled with conservative working-class Catholics is a bit dated — it hasn’t been true for 30 years.4 And with the loss of Catholic influence, abortion has gone from a “never talk about” political issue to one of the tipping points to election success.

Just ask PA Supreme Court Justice Dan McCaffery. He wasn’t doing particlulary well vying for an open seat on the Court (Justice Max Baer had died). He wasn’t losing, but he wasn’t closing the deal either. What closed it for him was a slew of abortion rights ads tagging his opponent, Carolyn Carluccio, as an anti-abortion zealot.

Again, the map5 shows the same story.

The margin was nearly 218,000 votes.

The fundamentals of 2020 were a pandemic, a recession, and Trumpism. In 2022, the fundamentals were abortion rights, gas prices, and a vocal “anti- wealthy carpetbagger” sentiment in Eastern PA. In 2023, the only issue in the closing weeks was abortion.

So, why is Pennsylvania being touted as a battleground? Mostly because Donald Trump won the state in 2016, albeit not by much and only with a plurality; and the polls, which are largely muddled through aggregation with GOP financed polls and poorly done ones, are showing a tight race.

And it’s no wonder. Despite the fact that Pennsylvania has gone Democratic in every presidential election since 1992 with one exception, it has appeared competitive since 2012.

What Corporate Media misses though is that the state has been won by the Democratic candidate 7 out of the last 8 elections. And it’s been won with over 50% of the vote in 5 of those 7 elections. The last time a Republican won the state with over 50% was 1988.6

What’s more, if you take out the 1992, 1996, and 2008 elections (which were all blowouts), the margins were 4.17% (2000), 2.5% (2004), 5.4% (2012), and 1.17% (2020). Donald Trump’s 2016 margin was a mere 0.17%.

While the presidential race poll aggregation is showing a tight and often statistically tied race in the Keystone State, the Senate race is much less tight.

A NYT-Sienna poll (commissioned by the Philadelphia Inquirer) showed a 4 point lead among likely voters and a 5 point lead among registered voters for Senator Bob Casey (poll was done 10/7-10/10).7 Sienna has been criticized for its methology and basically over-weighting right of Center voters. So, put a pin in that.

Morning Consult did a poll from 10/6 - 10/15), which gives some tracking to analyzing the race, and it put Bob Casey ahead of David Mc Cormick 49% - 41%.8 Morning Consult is definitely Democratic leaning, but their methology is also much better than Sienna. Plus tracking polls tend to be better overall. Let’s put a pin in that, too.

The Bullfinch Group did a poll (also a tracking style one) on 10/11-10/17, which showed Casey leading McCormick 50%-43%. The CEO of Bullfinch, Brett Lloyd, previously worked for a pollster that Trump used in 2020. Bullfinch seems okay though, but put a pin in that one, too.

Two other published polls were done in October. One by the Republican Trafalger Group, which is a very Republican and very biased pollster. They are in a word a muddler. They do polls to skew races to the right. Their 10/17 - 10/19 poll shows a tied race (47% each). The other poll was by a group called AtlasIntel, which seems to be largely a Central and South American concern. It shows a 1 point lead for David McCormick and its transparency is basically non-existent. Skip the pins.

If the pinned October polls are accurate, Casey is ahead — comfortably enough to tell GOP donors to give money to Ted Cruz, who’s actually in a tight race.

Why is Casey likely well ahead? Abortion rights.

The very Catholic and once “pro-life” Bob Casey has been blistering the airwaves criticizing Dave McCormick’s extreme position on abortion — McCormick is really really anti-abortion. In fact, prior to 2024, he positioned himself as an anti-abortion zealot.

Which brings us back to the 2024 presidential race.

Donald Trump won a close race in 2016 against a very poor candidate. He won it with a plurality and without winning the popular vote. In 2020, Biden’s national margin over Trump was 4.5%. And most importantly, Trump’s vote percentage barely budged from 2016.9

In Pennsylvania, Trump won with 48.18% in 2016 and lost the state in 2020 with 48.84%. Biden did 2.64 points better than Hillary.

Neither Trump’s number in 2016 and 2020 nor Hillary and Biden’s number reflect “what’s changed” and it’s the Dobbs decision. Unfortunately, most of the polls are missing the obvious as well — abortion rights are the motivating factor in voting.

And in Kamala Harris, the Democrats have a candidate comfortable with abortion rights and talking about how dangerous the Dobbs decision is.

And it's a political winner.

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