Elections always have consequences, as President Barack Obama once said, but not always the ones people expect.
For now, statewide trends seem to favor the still-unknown Democratic presidential nominee beating Republican President Donald Trump in Pennsylvania next year and reversing his shocking Keystone State win three years ago.
But G. Terry Madonna, the longtime Franklin & Marshall College political analyst and pollster, doesn’t see the trends as surefire forecasts.
“Midterms are not predictive of general elections that follow,” he said. “Ask Barack Obama.”
Republicans, aided by the tea party movement, won control of the U.S. House in 2010, only two years after Obama’s election, but Obama won re-election in 2012 anyway.
Trump’s win here hinged heavily on an almost 20-percentage-point win in Luzerne County and cutting Obama’s 27-point 2012 win in Lackawanna County to less than 4 points for Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016. Clinton still won Lackawanna, but county Republican Chairman Lance Stange Jr. thinks the county is within Trump’s reach next year.
Nonetheless, Democrats have plenty of reasons for optimism.
For starters, Trump’s polling numbers in Pennsylvania remain mixed at best. A recent Franklin & Marshall poll showed more than half of voters with a strongly unfavorable view of him and believing he’s doing a poor job.
Voting trends seem to reflect that.
Last year, Democrats picked up 11 seats in the state House, netted five seats in the Senate and added three U.S. House members.
Two weeks ago, Democrats shockingly won control of governments in the important four counties outside Philadelphia. A third of the state’s voters live in Philadelphia and Bucks, Chester, Delaware and Montgomery counties, which represent only five of the state’s 67 counties.
“The Republicans do have to be concerned about what’s going on in the Philly suburbs,” Madonna said. “What went on in 2018 and again in 2019 in the municipal and county elections was a stunning victory by the Democrats.”
Democrats swept Republicans off the Delaware County Council and gained control of county government for the first time since at least the Civil War, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported. They won a majority in the Chester commissioners office for the first time and control of the Bucks commissioners office. That means Democratic control of Philadelphia and all four Philadelphia suburban counties. Democrats flipped Montgomery years ago.
Almost two-thirds of southeastern voters support the impeachment inquiry into the president, according to the Franklin & Marshall poll.
“It bodes well for Democrats,” Democratic strategist Mike Mikus said.
As concerned as they are, Republicans downplay the Democrats’ southeastern Pennsylvania gains. They point out Trump lost the southeast in 2016 and still won the state by 44,000 votes.
“The Republican Party has been bleeding votes in the southeast for many years,” Republican strategist Vince Galko said. “I think the national atmosphere expedited it this time around.”
Republicans point to gains of their own in Pittsburgh’s suburban counties. They flipped control of commissioners offices in Washington, Greene and Westmoreland counties, three row offices in Cambria County and two row offices in Beaver County. They also kept control of commissioners offices in Beaver, Lawrence and Fayette counties.
“However, it’s going to come down more to who’s the president running against, what is the atmosphere at that time?” Galko said. “Is it Joe Biden or Elizabeth Warren or someone else? Certainly, that’s going to be a larger factor than just the outcome in southeast PA in this past election.”
In 2016, Galko said, voters went for Trump “because they were just sick of the system, sick of the status quo.”
“They may have been unsure about President Trump, but they wanted somebody to go down to D.C. and knock some tables over. They gave him the benefit of the doubt,” he said. “Will he earn that this time around again? I’m not sure, but I do think the economy is really helping him with those voters. ... We are living through the greatest economy of our lifetime right now.”
Mikus said Republican gains in suburban Pittsburgh matter less.
The southeastern counties where Democrats gained ground have three times as many voters as the southwestern counties where Republicans did.
“The southwestern counties got redder, but they weren’t by big margins,” Mikus said. “They were fairly close races. ... I take heart with that. I don’t think Republicans have much room to grow.”
A Trump victory would give Republicans back-to back wins here for the first time since 1988 when Vice President George H.W. Bush followed up President Ronald Reagan’s 1984 victory. A recent New York Times/Siena University poll had Trump trailing Biden in Pennsylvania by only 3 points, tied with Warren, a U.S. senator from Massachusetts, and a point behind Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
“The real question is will the enthusiasm level of Trump’s core support, at least where you are (in Scranton/Wilkes-Barre) and out in the southwest be sufficient to get him over the finish line in 2020, and we just don’t know that yet,” Madonna said.
Too much remains unknown, he said.
“Remember, we don’t know what’s going to happen with the economy, whether it’s strong or what happens if we slide into a recession. We don’t know if there will be a foreign policy crisis of some kind. And thirdly, we have to see how all this impeachment plays out,” Madonna said. “I won’t rule out that Trump can carry our state again. I won’t rule it out.”
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