Why was PA relatively close in 1984?

[GregTheGreat657]

Reagan only won PA by 7.35% in 1984, despite carrying the national popular vote by over 18 points, meaning PA voted nearly 11 points to the left of the nation. Meanwhile, it only voted 5 points to the left of the nation in 1988, and 2 points to the left of the nation in 1980. Did Mondale have some special appeal there? Was Reagan a bad candidate for Western PA? If so, why?

[Make America Grumpy Again]

The working class did not like Reagan

[OSR stands with Israel]

The working class did not like Reagan

Ehh depends on which part as while Appalachia disliked Reagan , NE PA did like him a lot . Reagan won Lackawanna county and outside of PA won 67% in Macomb showing while he was disliked by miners he was probably liked by Steel workers and Auto Workers

[Make America Grumpy Again]

The working class did not like Reagan

Ehh depends on which part as while Appalachia disliked Reagan , NE PA did like him a lot . Reagan won Lackawanna county and outside of PA won 67% in Macomb showing while he was disliked by miners he was probably liked by Steel workers and Auto Workers

NE PA is interesting in that regard. He got some WC support near Scranton/Wilkes Barre but a lot of the suburbia of Philly (Bucks & Monroe county etc. I think was/is largely white collar).

[sting in the rafters]

Reagan was notorious for union-busting, culminating in the firing of the air traffic controllers. The two-sided coin of the supply-side tax cuts and deregulation which made him popular in suburbia is a relative weakness in unionized areas with primarily natural resource economies (e.g. the Iron Range, Appalachia, barely flipping Genesee). While Mondale's staunch liberalism was anathema nationwide, it held strongest in the ancestral cornerstones of the New Deal coaltion. The areas where Reagan did historically well like NEPA, the Detroit suburbs, and the South were the famed "Reagan Democrats".

[Podgy the Bear]

Ed Rollins (who was Reagan's campaign manager in 1984) related that Reagan's internal polling indicated in late October 1984 that PA was quite close.  There were some concerns that he could lose the state.  They spent the last two weeks carpet bombing the state with ads, and both Reagan and Bush made appearances in PA during that time.  In the end, Reagan pulled away by a comfortable but not huge margin.  They had done a similar setup for OH and were more successful.

The Reagan campaign was not looking at a 49 or 50 state sweep at the outset.  They were genuinely worried about Jesse Jackson's program to get out the African American vote and that this could have an impact in states like PA, IL, MI, and NY.  Initially, the priority was to clinch the 270 EV (which they felt quite sure about).    Once that happened, they started to go after the big states in September and October.

Interestingly, it was Richard Nixon who played a significant behind the scenes role in this strategy.   This was set up by Pat Buchanan.  The Reagan campaign operatives visited Nixon at his house in New Jersey, and Nixon was in regular contact with Rollins and Lee Atwater during the campaign.