Will It All Come Down to Pennsylvania? A Look at the State of the Race

We now have less than three weeks left in this presidential election season, and Donald Trump is leading in six of the seven battleground states – Wisconsin being the exception. His lead is narrow but the trends seem to be favoring Trump/Vance. Two states in particular are liable to be the key to winning the election; if either side wins both Pennsylvania and Michigan, they win the race. As it stands now, the Trump ticket can lose Pennsylvania, take Michigan, and still win; the Harris campaign, if all else is equal and we take the RealClearPolitics (RCP) averages at face value, Harris/Walz has to have both states to win. Those look to be the most likely scenarios at the moment. (You can play with scenarios using RCP’s make-your-own map here.) 

The most recent PA poll, conducted on Oct 9-13 by Rasmussen, has Donald Trump up by three points. The RCP average has him leading Kamala Harris by 0.3 points.

Analyst Salena Zito offered some thoughts on Pennsylvania Tuesday on RealClearPolitics radio: 

Some specific counties, according to Zito, will be the key to winning Pennsylvania. And a couple of those counties have been, until recently, Democratic strongholds, but that appears to be changing.

The first county I’m looking at is Cambria County home of Johnstown. This is a county that three years ago was majority Democrat, now they’re at almost 50,000 more registered Republicans.

Let’s look at the 2020 results.

Cambria County’s party registration notwithstanding, in 2020 Trump won Cambria County by more than a two-to-one margin over Joe Biden. So, it’s a little concerning to use Cambria County’s shift in voter registration as an indicator; it would appear more of a trailing indicator than a leading one. A heavily Democratic county wouldn’t have gone for any Republican candidate by that wide a margin unless this registration change was already well and truly underway.

Luzerne County up by Scranton I would watch. Erie and Northampton — with high cost of living and inflation. Inflation is really crushing people. People forget that the city of Erie is the poorest zip code in our entire state. They have a problem with fentanyl. They have a problem with homelessness. They have a problem with crime.

In 2020, Trump won Luzerne County 56-42. That’s a handy win, and I expect this is the same trend we’re seeing in Cambria County. Erie went to Joe Biden in 2020 – by one point, 49 to 48. Northampton went to Biden, but by an even narrower margin, 49.8 to 49. Granted these are counties that are ripe to be flipped, especially given the apparent trend in Pennsylvania polling at the moment – which, I suspect, is underestimating the support for Trump/Vance. That’s just my gut feeling, mind you, and I’m a long, long way from Pennsylvania. But Salena Zito seems to agree.

I would give the edge to Trump just because I think the people that are in the middle of despair, in particular in the heavily Democrat area of the city of Erie, I’m not sure they’re turning up to vote. People have not seen them, they have not heard them. And everything else outside of Erie is Republican.

We’re really getting waaaay down in the weeds here. But there’s a lot of interesting data to crunch, and if you are, like me, a data junkie, it’s interesting to look at this stuff now and compare it to what actually happens in the election. In fact, I’ve crunched enough data, both here at RedState and on my own, that I will essay the prediction (which I reserve the right to change based on new data) that, as things stand, Trump/Vance will take Pennsylvania. That gives them the election unless something truly bizarre happens west of the Mississippi. But the Trump/Vance team will have to win by enough of a margin to overcome any shenanigans in places like Philadelphia’s urban districts; that will be the challenge.

See Related: Kamala Goes Off the Rails in PA, but It Was Who Wasn’t There That Tells the Tale

‘Running Out of Time’: Shades of 2019 at Kamala Harris’ Pennsylvania HQ As Panic Sets in

Here’s where Salena Zito makes a good point, and it’s one I’ve been repeating for some time now:

The parties are changing, the Democrats have become too much of a social justice entity. God and faith are no longer part of the ideology — climate change has become more of the center of their faith, the most important entity.

And that may well be what costs the Democrats the White House. The question is this: Will they learn anything from this? Or will they continue down the path to becoming a fringe party, one that caters to coastal elites, celebrities, and the dependency class? Again, I’ll offer a guess: Not yet. It will take them a few more losses first.