Trump rebuilds Democrats’ ‘blue wall’ states with red bricks. Especially Pennsylvania

Associated Press

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Republicans landed historic victories in Pennsylvania this week, winning the battleground state’s valuable presidential electoral votes, posting a two-seat gain in its U.S. House delegation and sweeping all four statewide offices on the ballot, including a U.S. Senate seat.

The strong performance means Donald Trump has won Pennsylvania in two out of three tries, after Republicans had lost six straight presidential elections there.

Something similar happened in the other “blue wall” states of Michigan and Wisconsin, Rust Belt states where Trump prevailed again after losing in 2020. Still, Democrats held on in key Senate races in Wisconsin and Michigan, if just barely, and the results played out differently in each state.

Republican victories were most pronounced in Pennsylvania, a state flagged early on as this year’s preeminent swing state, where deep dissatisfaction surfaced with the status quo, more often than not to Republicans’ benefit.

Voters had the economy on their minds.

Voters were in a bad mood

About a third of voters nationwide, including in the blue wall states, said they felt their families were “falling behind” financially, according to AP VoteCast, a survey of more than 120,000 voters nationwide. That was an increase from 2020, when about 2 in 10 felt that way. In 2020, a majority of those financially strapped voters voted for President Joe Biden, but this year, about two-thirds supported Trump.

Berwood Yost, director of the Center for Opinion Research at Franklin & Marshall College in Pennsylvania, said Democrats had a lot working against them among swing voters: their deteriorating personal finances, fueled by inflation, and the sense that many blamed Biden.

Yost said Vice President Kamala Harris ran a strong campaign but was unable to overcome those headwinds.

“The mood of the electorate was so negative, they took it out on the incumbent party,” Yost said.

Some voters’ memories of Trump’s presidency improved with the passage of time. VoteCast shows just 40% of Pennsylvania voters said they approve of Biden’s job performance, while 54% said they approved of Trump when he was president. Four years ago, Trump approval in Pennsylvania was 49%.

In his victory over Harris, Trump won Pennsylvania by about 2%, with votes still being counted. That was about three times the margin of his 2016 victory. He lost Pennsylvania by just over 1% in 2020 to Biden.

Trump carried Wisconsin by less than a point, as he did in 2016, after losing it by about a half percentage point in 2020.

In Michigan, Trump won by about 80,000 — many times his nearly 11,000-vote win in 2016 and about half the margin of his loss to Biden in 2020.

In Pennsylvania, Trump gained ground in Democratic-friendly counties statewide, including the Democratic bastion of Philadelphia and heavily populated suburbs that swung hard against Trump in 2016 and 2020.

In Trump-friendly exurbs and rural areas, his margins grew across the board.

His strength also helped David McCormick beat three-term Democratic Sen. Bob Casey, Republicans say, allowing them to reclaim the Senate seat the GOP lost in 2022 when Democrat John Fetterman replaced retiring Republican Sen. Pat Toomey.

In addition, a two-seat pickup shifted the state’s congressional delegation from 9-8 in favor of Democrats to a 10-7 Republicans majority, giving the GOP a valuable boost in its fight to keep House control.

And for the first time since the state attorney general’s office became an elected position in 1980, Republicans will hold all three statewide row offices.

That includes treasurer, auditor general and attorney general, a position thrust into the national spotlight four years ago when Trump sued to overturn his 2020 defeat.

Legislative majorities were unchanged: Republicans held their six-seat state Senate majority while Democrats held their one-seat state House majority.

With more Republicans at the Capitol, Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro — who made Harris’ list of finalists for vice president — could be under more pressure to work across the aisle.

Trump visited Pennsylvania more than any other state and often brought downballot Republicans on stage.

Trump survived an assassination attempt in western Pennsylvania over the summer — then returned there for a second rally — and drew a crowd to a McDonald’s in a politically divided Philadelphia suburb where he donned an apron and tried his hand at the French fry station.

Trump campaigned in conservative white areas, in heavily Black Philadelphia and in a fast-growing belt of cities from Lancaster to Reading to Allentown where Latinos are settling, and AP VoteCast showed that he benefited from modest swings among traditionally Democratic voters.

Across the country, and in Pennsylvania, clear majorities of Black and Latino voters supported Harris, but slightly more of them backed Trump this year compared with four years ago.

“I told Donald Trump in 2015 when he asked ‘what do I have to do to win Pennsylvania,’ I said, ‘come here a lot, Pennsylvanians like to know their candidates,’” said Rob Gleason, who was state GOP chairman at the time.

In Wisconsin and Michigan, Republicans gained but not as much

Democrats had a much better night in Wisconsin than in the other “blue wall” states, despite Trump’s victory.

Trump cut into Democratic margins in the counties around Milwaukee and Madison, and held or boosted his margins in rural areas, suburbs and other conservative areas.

“There were a lot of people who didn’t think we could do this,” Wisconsin Republican Party chair Brian Schimming said. “That blue brick in that blue wall is now red in Wisconsin.”

Still, Democrats were buoyed by U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin ’s narrow victory, and newly enacted legislative maps drawn by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers helped his party.

They made gains in both the state Senate and Assembly, shrinking the Republican Senate supermajority to a simple majority.

In Michigan, Harris carried Wayne County, which includes Detroit and suburbs with heavy Arab American populations, but by a far slimmer margin — about 90,000 votes — than Biden’s. Meanwhile, Trump boosted his margins by more than 55,000 votes in two other big suburban counties, Macomb and Oakland.

Democrat Elissa Slotkin narrowly won Michigan’s open U.S. Senate seat, but Democrats lost the House seat she vacated to run for the higher chamber.

Meanwhile, they lost their state House majority, ending a two-year run in which a Democratic-controlled statehouse enacted new laws on gun safety, abortion rights and other top priorities.

Republicans say Trump’s embrace of early voting and emphasis on inflation and immigration was effective.

In Pennsylvania, some Democrats said Harris should have picked Shapiro to be her running mate. Others suggested Biden, who grew up in Pennsylvania and made it his presidential campaign base, would have done better.

Former Gov. Ed Rendell questioned whether Harris’ campaign effectively responded to attacks in the nation’s No. 2 natural gas state that she would ban fracking. Two-thirds of Pennsylvania voters support expanding fracking, according to VoteCast.

Larry Maggi, a Democratic county commissioner in blue-collar Washington County, just outside Pittsburgh, said Harris didn’t connect with people — particularly men, and especially young white men — the way Trump did.

“That bravado talk, that tough talk, people like that,” Maggi said. “It resonated.”

A Marine Corps veteran, Maggi recalled a conversation over a beer in a Veterans of Foreign Wars hall with a friend who was wearing a red MAGA hat.

Maggi asked him why he likes Trump.

“Because he tells it how it is,” the friend replied.

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Associated Press journalists Hannah Fingerhut in Washington, Joseph Frederick in Philadelphia, Joey Cappelletti in Detroit, and Scott Bauer in Madison, Wisconsin, contributed to this report.