Pennsylvania: The “Key”stone State in the 2020 Presidential Election?
Pennsylvania is known as the Keystone state because the state served an essential function in the fledgling political system of the original thirteen colonies. In this historically divisive political climate of 2020, Pennsylvania again may be the key. Both presidential campaigns will be closely watching the election results of several swing states, including Florida, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Arizona. Many political scientists have emphasized that Pennsylvania may be a key to the White House, however.
In 2016, then-candidate Donald Trump won in Pennsylvania by only 44,000 votes. In a state with 8.5 million registered voters, that is a miniscule margin of victory. Given the narrow margin of the 2016 win in Pennsylvania, the 2020 Trump campaign is in a very tight spot as they cannot count on the support of Pennsylvania’s voters and the state’s 20 electoral votes could be critical for President Trump to get to 270 to win the election. Considering the current state of our union, with civil unrest around the country and a global pandemic that has triggered an economic recession, even the narrow margin that put Trump over the top in Pennsylvania in 2016 could be difficult to achieve in 2020. The Trump campaign has intensely focused on Pennsylvania, but did President Trump do enough to secure Pennsylvania in 2020?
If the past is prologue, then analyzing Pennsylvania’s presidential voting history could be important in trying to predict the 2020 winner. In elections since 2000, Pennsylvania has gone to the Democratic nominee overwhelmingly four to one. Of course, an outlier since 2000 is the 2016 election in which Donald Trump won by 44,000 votes. Why would a state trending democratic go to one of the most controversial Republican nominees in history? One answer could be the ability of Donald Trump to rally the vote of white, non-college-educated voters. In a comparison of 2012 and 2016, turnout rates of white, non-college-educated voters increased from 54% to 57% nationally, with Pennsylvania’s white non-college-educated turnout increasing from 53% to 57.4%. This increase in non-college-educated white voters is essential in Pennsylvania as the state comprises 81%, white voters. Of the 81% white voters of Pennsylvania, 54% were non-college-educated. A large voter turnout of this demographic should give President Trump a significant advantage, yet he was able to win Pennsylvania in 2016 by only 44,000 votes. Another advantage Trump used to win Pennsylvania, and the election is the low turnout of African-American voters. Nationally from 2012 to 2016, African-American turnout decreased from 62% to 57%, while in Pennsylvania, the only change was .02%. Although seeming like a minor change, it is vital as the state was won on a razor-thin margin of victory.
After four years in office, President Trump is running for reelection, and Pennsylvania, based on the polls, looks very different. According to polling, Biden is leading Trump by 7.2%. This polling is wildly different from the polling done before the 2016 election when Secretary Clinton only had a 1% advantage over Trump. This drastic change in polling likely can be largely attributed to one main event: the COVID-19 pandemic. According to polling, President Trump received a negative favorability rating by Pennsylvania voters of 41 to 55%. However, most damning the polling suggests that Pennsylvania voters disapprove of Trump’s handling of the COVID-19 crisis 56 to 42%. Of course, most people now are skeptical of relying on state polling results since virtually all polls predicted that Hillary Clinton was going to win the 2016 election. Since then, however, pollsters have worked to correct the mistakes from 2016 to try to improve the accuracy of the state polls, including changing the models to better quantify polling errors and swings in public opinion, and “weighing” the polling samples to not over-represent any demographic. Further, the current polls are reflecting larger margins for Joe Biden than they did for Hillary Clinton and so the current polls may be directionally more reliable for that reason.
Currently, President Trump’s most concerning polling numbers are those of the women of Pennsylvania and of voters over retirement age. Looking at polling with women in 2016, Trump won women in Pennsylvania 50 to 47% over Clinton. Now those numbers are very different. In a poll taken in September, Biden was ahead by 18 points, but in a poll done in early October, that number jumped up to 26 points. This change from women comes primarily from white, college-educated women as well as suburban women changing sides. This healthy lead for Biden should be concerning to President Trump because the majority of voters in Pennsylvania, 53%, are women. The numbers with retirement-aged voters are also troubling for Trump. President Trump won retirement-aged voters 54 to 44% over Clinton. The issue now is that Biden has a sizable lead of retirement-aged voters as he leads 58 to 39%. Of course, the issue that changed most of the older voters’ minds was the COVID-19 pandemic, as these voters who are vulnerable are disgruntled with the handling of the virus. One thing is for certain, however, is that voters are motivated. There have already been 100.7 million early votes cast, with Pennsylvania having 2.5 million ballots cast two weeks before the election. In 2016, 137.1 million people voted in total.
In light of the current circumstances, Trump’s narrow win in the Keystone state in 2016 should not give him confidence that Pennsylvania will again put their 20 electoral votes in his column. The voting demographics that Trump narrowly held may not hold. If President Trump cannot count on wins in the other swing states, and so Pennsylvania is a “must win” state for him, there are worrying signs for his campaign. The campaign is aware of those signs which likely motivated their recent court challenge to try to limit the time period for counting votes in Pennsylvania. Their challenge was lost, however, since the Supreme Court just ruled to allow ballots from both Pennsylvania and North Carolina to be counted three days after the November 3rd election day. This comes after the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania refused to allow the absentee ballots to be counted if they were received after the official date of the election. If favorable trends are predictive of wins, then the Trump campaign may be seeing worrying signs of the Pennsylvania results.
Blake Hollier, Student of Political Science at The Catholic University of American
