Pennsylvania is the ultimate battleground for 2024, with the White House, Senate, and House all poised to flip based on how voters here cast their ballots. In this series, Pining for Pennsylvania: Unlocking the crucial Keystone State, the Washington Examiner will look at the demographics, politics, and key areas that have made Pennsylvania the must-watch state of the year. Part six, below, looks at how the suburbs are a major concern for Donald Trump’s campaign.
Former President Donald Trump‘s struggles with suburban voters have plagued him throughout the 2024 primary cycle, continuing even when he is the only GOP candidate still in the race.
Trump’s trouble with the voting demographic was particularly noticeable in the Pennsylvania primary, where despite Trump winning nearly 84% of the vote, or 790,000 votes, Nikki Haley, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, won more than 157,000 votes, or nearly 17%, roughly seven weeks after suspending her presidential campaign.
“There’s no question that there’s work that the former president has to do with suburban voters, particularly suburban women, particularly in the Philadelphia collar-county area,” Christian Nascimento, chairman of the Montgomery County Republican Committee, told the Washington Examiner.
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Philadelphia’s collar counties include Bucks, Montgomery, Chester, and Delaware counties. The “collar counties” shifted more in Democrats’ favor in 2020, with Biden significantly expanding the margins by which then-Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton won the counties in 2016 against Trump before ultimately losing the state.
Trump won Pennsylvania in 2016 by just 44,000 votes, while Biden flipped the state in 2020 by over 80,000 votes. The thin margin by which the state has been won in the past two presidential cycles means that if enough Haley voters cross over to Biden in November or simply sit out the election, it could sink Trump’s chances to win the state back.
Haley’s top performances in Pennsylvania’s 2024 primaries were located in the Philadelphia collar counties, particularly in Montgomery and Chester counties, where she won 25% of the vote in both counties.
The next top two Haley strongholds were in Delaware County and Cumberland County, where she won 23% of the vote in both counties. In nearby Bucks County, Haley won 19% of the vote.
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Biden won the majority of these counties, except for Cumberland, in 2020.
Nascimento told the Washington Examiner that Tuesday’s results were due to a “sleepy primary” but that it won’t lead to dire problems for Trump.
“I think the thing that he can do to work on that is focus on his policies and really shine a light on the differences between where we were when he was in office versus where things are under President Biden,” he continued.
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In Dauphin County, another place Biden won in 2020, Haley won 21% of the vote. Dauphin County also includes Harrisburg, Pennsylvania’s state capital.
Haley won 20% of the vote in Erie County, another Biden 2020 county, and Lancaster County, which Trump won in 2020%.
Haley also won 19% in Allegheny County, home to Pittsburgh, and 19% in Centre County, both of which went for Biden in 2020.
Joe Morris, Mercyhurst University senior political analyst and chairman of the political science department, spent a decade conducting polls in Pennsylvania and is conducting in-depth interviews with voters in Erie County.
In this northwestern part of Pennsylvania, the winner of the county has gone on to win the state and presidency in several elections.
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An overwhelming majority of Erie County residents told Morris they were turned off by moments when Trump threw paper towels at people in Puerto Rico devastated by Hurricane Maria.
“We are a state that has a great deal of empathy. We’re socially conservative, but we have a great deal of empathy for people who are suffering,” Morris said. “That bombastic rhetoric probably doesn’t play as well in most of Pennsylvania as it does in other places.”
Former President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign event in Schnecksville, Pennsylvania, Saturday, April 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Joe Lamberti)
Morris claimed there is a playbook that Trump could take to win the Keystone State that doesn’t involve winning Haley supporters or Biden-sympathetic Republican voters.
“If you look back to 2016, Donald Trump’s strategy was not to go to Philadelphia and Pittsburgh and win votes,” Morris said. “He went to all of the other communities in Pennsylvania and really pushed turnout up really high, and that offset his performance in those other counties.”
“And if he is interested in doing as well in Pennsylvania, as he did in 2016, then I think that’s his best strategy,” he added.
Some political experts cautioned against assuming that Haley voters would abandon Trump in November.
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“Some of those voters, they’re going to come home. There’s no need to win them over. They are going to be loyal to the Republican Party,” said Sam Chen, principal director of the strategy firm The Liddell Group and a former staffer to retired Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey. “This was an opportunity to put a protest up. But a lot of voters they need to be won.”
But Chen cautioned that in conservative Centre County, Trump’s margins were concerning. “That’s not a great number for Donald Trump in that part of the state,” he said referring to the northern and middle sections of the state known as the “middle T.”
“With the exception of Dauphin County, which is Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, the capital, that is a very, very red, very Republican area,” Chen said. “When Sen. Toomey won statewide twice, a big part of that was claiming that middle T.”
The Biden campaign did not resist slamming Trump for continuing to hemorrhage Haley voters.
“Across the battleground states, hundreds of thousands of *Republican* voters have come out AGAINST Trump,” wrote spokesman Ammar Moussa in an email sent out Wednesday afternoon. “Even though he’s been the presumptive nominee for seven weeks, he is not building the coalition necessary to win 270 electoral votes.”
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Yet the Trump campaign dismissed the attacks in a statement to the Washington Examiner.
“President Trump continued his winning streak and delivered a resounding primary win in Pennsylvania,” said Karoline Leavitt, national press secretary for the Trump campaign.
“More importantly, President Trump continues to dominate Feeble Joe Biden in every battleground state poll including his home state,” Leavitt continued. “The Dishonest Biden campaign has spent millions in Pennsylvania gaslighting voters, but it is not enough to make everyone ignore Bidenflation and rising costs, Biden’s border bloodbath, and his war on American energy.”
A Republican National Committee spokesperson referred the Washington Examiner to polls showing voter dissatisfaction with Biden’s handling of the economy, the border crisis, and foreign policy.
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All of which Nascimento said Trump should highlight to Pennsylvania voters in the lead-up to the November election.
“He should talk about the Abraham accords and talk about what he did in the Middle East and how this type of situation that we have now, several situations, wasn’t happening under his watch,” Nascimento said of how Trump should discuss the multiple conflicts currently happening including the battle between Israel and Hamas.
More than $22 million in “Money Match” checks were mailed to nearly 100,000 Pennsylvanians, the treasury said.
In a news release on Thursday, the Pennsylvania Treasury said people should be on the lookout for the checks, which are part of the Pennsylvania Money Match program. Treasurer Stacy Garrity said to cash or deposit the checks “promptly.”
The first Pennsylvania Money Match checks, totaling more than $1.7 million, are now on the way to Pennsylvanians’ mailboxes. Pennsylvania Money Match is a new program that allows Treasury to return certain unclaimed property to rightful owners automatically, which was approved unanimously by the General Assembly and signed by the Governor last year.
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“I want Pennsylvanians to know that this is a real check, it is real money, and it belongs to them,” Garrity said in the news release. “And as always, I still encourage everyone to regularly search for unclaimed property online, as many claims will not qualify for the Money Match process.”
With the mailing of the year’s last batch of checks, more than $50 million will have been returned automatically to Pennsylvanians.
What are Money Match checks?
The program allows the state treasury to automatically return unclaimed property valued up to $500 owned by a single individual. Before the program was created in 2024, residents themselves had to seek out unclaimed property.
“I’m thrilled to continue this program as we work hard to get more money back to its rightful owners,” Garrity said in the news release.
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However, if the property has multiple owners or is valued higher than $500, Pennsylvanians still need to file a claim.
What is unclaimed property?
Unclaimed property includes dormant bank accounts, uncashed checks, forgotten stocks, rebates and insurance policies, among other things. It can also include the contents of abandoned safe deposit boxes.
According to the state treasury, more than one in 10 Pennsylvanians is owed some of the $5 billion in unclaimed property in the treasury’s care, and the average value of a claim is more than $1,000.
Unclaimed property scam
On its website, the state treasury has a warning about scammers using text messages to target potential unclaimed property claimants.
The department “never reaches out to people in regard to any program, including unclaimed property, via unsolicited text messages.”
A special weather statement was issued by the National Weather Service on Friday at 10:06 a.m. until 1 p.m. for Warren, McKean, Elk, Cameron, Clearfield, Cambria and Somerset counties.
“Temperatures will drop below the freezing mark through midday with rain showers quickly changing to snow showers. Blustery winds may dry off roads and other paved surfaces, but any residual water from previous rain or melting snow could freeze up and result in slick spots through the afternoon,” explains the weather service.
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