Berks County, Pennsylvania

[El Betico]

I thought it was a Dem trending county, given his growing( Latino especially) minority population...why did it swing hard towards Trump in 2016? Considering that even Lancaster kept trending D...

[wbrocks67]

PA-er here. The growing Latino population is one thing, but there's also a lot of the stereotypical "white working class" Trump voters there. A lot like like in redder PA, where its ancestral Democrats who now lean Republican. It has lower college-educated whites as well than the other "Philly Suburbs" as well.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I thought it was a Dem trending county, given his growing( Latino especially) minority population...why did it swing hard towards Trump in 2016? Considering that even Lancaster kept trending D...

It is still overwhelmingly non-college white and the growing latino population creates a racial polarization that pushes the non-college white vote more Republican.

Berks was also a swing county previously leaving room for the GOP to grow among this vote, whereas Lancaster has been SAFE R for like 100 years, minimizing room for growth among the county's non-college whites.

[Calthrina950]

I thought it was a Dem trending county, given his growing( Latino especially) minority population...why did it swing hard towards Trump in 2016? Considering that even Lancaster kept trending D...

It is still overwhelmingly non-college white and the growing latino population creates a racial polarization that pushes the non-college white vote more Republican.

Berks was also a swing county previously leaving room for the GOP to grow among this vote, whereas Lancaster has been SAFE R for like 100 years, minimizing room for growth among the county's non-college whites.

164 years, I would say. Lyndon Johnson in 1964 is the only Democrat to win Lancaster County since before the Civil War.

[Orser67]

Berks is a weird county in that it's at the meeting point of a few different regions: it's in the Greater Philadelphia CSA but not the MSA, and borders South Central PA (Lancaster, York, etc.), the Lehigh Valley, and Northeastern PA. Casey won it by 4 points in 2018, Trump won it by 10 points in 2016, Romney won it by 1 point in 2012, and Obama won it by 9 points in 2008. Most of the county is split between the swingy 6th district (Chester County + Reading) and the strongly Republican 9th district.

It's politics are polarized between Democratic Reading and the Republican areas surrounding it. It doesn't have the super dark red areas that you see in Central PA, but the areas outside of Reading are far more Republican than the suburbs of SEPA. I think it's the type of place that Democrats don't necessarily need to win, but they may need to reduce Trump's margin (or at least keep it steady) if they're going to win in 2020.

[MARGINS6729]

Berks is a weird county in that it's at the meeting point of a few different regions: it's in the Greater Philadelphia CSA but not the MSA, and borders South Central PA (Lancaster, York, etc.), the Lehigh Valley, and Northeastern PA. Casey won it by 4 points in 2018, Trump won it by 10 points in 2016, Romney won it by 1 point in 2012, and Obama won it by 9 points in 2008. Most of the county is split between the swingy 6th district (Chester County + Reading) and the strongly Republican 9th district.

It's politics are polarized between Democratic Reading and the Republican areas surrounding it. It doesn't have the super dark red areas that you see in Central PA, but the areas outside of Reading are far more Republican than the suburbs of SEPA. I think it's the type of place that Democrats don't necessarily need to win, but they may need to reduce Trump's margin (or at least keep it steady) if they're going to win in 2020.

Yep!!!