What is happening in Pennsylvania? A trend, or back to normal?

[Zaybay]

I personally believe a key feature of whats happening in PA is threefold.

1. The Suburbs of Philly have almost fully converted to the Ds.

2. The Ds bled in the North West, but they stopped most of it, and gained a bit in the Scranton area, accounting for the wave.

3. The west of the state, specifically Erie, PA, went hard back to the Ds, and was part of a shift that we saw throughout 2018, of urban/suburban areas that voted for Trump in 2016, with D ancestry and a more WWC background, going hard Democratic. In the South of the West, a new effect was seen, a spillage. The Blue Vote from Pittsburgh and its suburbs was starting to spill over into the old D stomping grounds, causing a shift. These spillage areas are the only areas growing in Pop. to, so its especially deadly to Rs.

PA is definitely losing its Midwestern identity and embracing its more Northeastern persona. If I were the D presidential candidate, I would be extravagant about the PA results in 2018.

[Zaybay]

We need to be careful about reading too much into this. Democrats did very, very well in the 2018 midterms in this state, but they also had popular Democratic incumbents and very weak Republican challengers. A few years down the road, I see this year being an exception to Pennsylvania's purple status.

Wasnt just that, we have the congressional vote as well, and a similar overpreformance was seen there as well, not to mention state legislature races.

[Zaybay]

We need to be careful about reading too much into this. Democrats did very, very well in the 2018 midterms in this state, but they also had popular Democratic incumbents and very weak Republican challengers. A few years down the road, I see this year being an exception to Pennsylvania's purple status.

At the very least, it should dampen that hot take which was going around about PA being more likely to vote for Trump than WI.

A) People say that?

B) I'm curious as to what their rationale was.

Yeah, it got quite a lot of votes in this poll.

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=278854.0

I say it all the time and I will keep it saying it for this reason.

Trump only won Wisconsin because of lower turnout. He got less votes than Romney did. If Milwaukee turns out in 2020, Trump would need to rebound in WoW to RoJo levels to compensate.

The same is not true for PA.

I dont know where this idea that WI is going to become the most R state of the three when, as you point out, Trump didnt do better than Romney in raw voter totals. At least in PA and MI, Trump made gains.

[Zaybay]

We need to be careful about reading too much into this. Democrats did very, very well in the 2018 midterms in this state, but they also had popular Democratic incumbents and very weak Republican challengers. A few years down the road, I see this year being an exception to Pennsylvania's purple status.

At the very least, it should dampen that hot take which was going around about PA being more likely to vote for Trump than WI.

A) People say that?

B) I'm curious as to what their rationale was.

Yeah, it got quite a lot of votes in this poll.

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=278854.0

I say it all the time and I will keep it saying it for this reason.

Trump only won Wisconsin because of lower turnout. He got less votes than Romney did. If Milwaukee turns out in 2020, Trump would need to rebound in WoW to RoJo levels to compensate.

The same is not true for PA.

I dont know where this idea that WI is going to become the most R state of the three when, as you point out, Trump didnt do better than Romney in raw voter totals. At least in PA and MI, Trump made gains.

Even in MI Trump's gains were smaller than Clinton's losses. Clinton lost about 250,000 votes while Trump only gained about 100,000.  I think you can safely say that WI and MI were decided by low AA and Democratic turnout in key Democratic strongholds in both states. Now while I didn't examine Scranton or Pittsburgh, the Philly numbers seem indicative that Democrats actually did turnout in PA, because if they didn't Clinton would have lost far more votes relative to Obama and Trump would have won the state by 5% or 6%.

In large measure this is probably due to the local strength of the Philly Democratic operation, which is well known for getting the job done. In 2010 for instance, it is said that when Toomey saw the Philly numbers, he expected to lose.

Only WI was decided by low AA turnout.