July 11, 2024 - 1:00pm

Decades ago, a young Joe Biden described himself as “the most popular politician in Pennsylvania”. In 1980, at one state stop for Jimmy Carter’s flagging presidential re-election campaign, then-Delaware Senator Biden told attendees: “I am one of the most important men in America.” He added: “I’d probably be president myself if I wasn’t too young the last time around.”

This time around, youth and popularity aren’t on his side — including in the deal-breaker Keystone State where Biden, a Scranton native, long branded himself as its “third senator”. According to the RealClearPolitics’s polling average, following Biden’s calamitous debate Trump is now leading the President by 5.3 points. For perspective, based on archival RCP polling averages dating to 2004, no Republican presidential candidate has led at this point of a campaign in Pennsylvania (Biden was up by 6.5 points this week in 2020). As Cook Political Report’s Amy Walter noted this week based on one set of surveys, “Trump expanded his lead […] from four points to 10 points.”

Biden can’t win re-election without Pennsylvania. This is why, as Axios reported, the Trump campaign still views Pennsylvania as the toughest to win among the seven swing states. But to Democratic elders — such as campaign veteran James Carville, whose career was launched by his management of a successful 1986 gubernatorial campaign in Pennsylvania — there is no path to victory for Biden.

It was 1986 when Carville famously described the state as Paoli (suburban Philadelphia) and Penn Hills (suburban Pittsburgh) with Alabama filling the rest. Today, even after Trump’s narrow 2016 victory there, Pennsylvania has dramatically changed. If anything, the state’s vast, growing, and Democratic-trending suburbs — in many cases just Republican farmland in the mid-Eighties — remain Biden’s electoral insurance policy despite current polling.

After all, it was only two years ago in Pennsylvania when a health-compromised candidate was written off following a poor debate performance. Thanks to suburban turnout and improved margins among working-class voters, John Fetterman managed to defeat Republican Dr Mehmet Oz. “Morning-after thermonuclear beat downs from my race from the debate and polling geniuses […] And what happened? The only seat to flip and won by a historic margin (+5). Chill the fuck out,” posted Fetterman, a steadfast Biden supporter, after the President’s debate.

Now the oldest swing state will decide Biden’s fate. But current polling could engender overconfidence among Republicans. Healthcare-driven suburbia, especially around Harrisburg and its growing outskirts, is leaning Democratic and beginning to look like metro Washington.

Even in working-class regions such as Biden’s native northeastern Pennsylvania, as Fetterman’s 2022 campaign proved, there are still enough older, pro-labour Democrats who view their ancestral party through a nostalgic lens. Meanwhile, east of the Susquehanna River, many cities, comprising a global warehousing hub, now have Hispanic-majority or plurality populations (Dominicans are becoming Philadelphia’s largest immigrant group), but their Trump sympathies may not translate into turnout without GOP engagement.

And in Philadelphia, despite favourable national polling for Trump, Biden will still count on voter turnout among the city’s African American population. “God knew Biden needs some love,” a pastor said upon the President’s visit to a city church last Sunday. Indeed, it’s still a state where Trump risks underperforming in areas which should be a key source of support. And NeverTrump Boomers, disillusioned Zoomers, and double haters will keep a Trump-Biden rematch unpredictable.

Biden barely won Pennsylvania in 2020, and though present polling is slanting in favour of his Republican rival, the state will doubtless remain the most competitive and consequential one headed into November. Last Saturday, California Governor Gavin Newsom campaigned for Biden in suburban Philadelphia’s Bucks County, on track to holding the sole GOP voter-registration majority in the metro region. Newsom’s stop was reminiscent of Biden’s 1980 tour for Carter. “You’ve probably all already made up your minds, so I don’t know what the hell I’m doing here,” Biden told Pennsylvania voters that year.

Even following the debate, it would be state voters’ preexisting conditions, particularly economic discontent, that would lead Pennsylvania voters to narrowly pull for Trump. But in the post-Trump era, especially after the Dobbs decision in 2022, Pennsylvania Republicans have suffered punishing losses due to suburban voter turnout. These voters, alongside stalwart older Democrats and former Republicans, will keep the state competitive — and unpredictable.


Charles F. McElwee is the founding editor of RealClearPennsylvania. Follow him on X at @CFMcElwee.