November 6, 2024 - 7:00am
According to Fox News and CBS, Donald Trump is now projected to win the crucial battleground state of Pennsylvania, and with it the presidency. As victory looks increasingly assured, a few trends stand out from results in the Keystone State.
Trump’s campaign promised that his appeal among Hispanic voters would boost him in Philadelphia and the smaller line of cities across eastern Pennsylvania — Lancaster, Reading, Allentown, Bethlehem, Easton, and Hazelton. Kamala Harris’s campaign team thought the group would turn out for Democrats, as it had done in previous years, spurred on perhaps by the widespread media coverage of an offensive joke about Puerto Rico told by a comedian during a Trump rally at Madison Square Garden.
It appears that Trump had the better argument. Northampton County (home to Easton and most of Bethlehem), which had voted for Trump in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020, appears to decisively favour Trump in 2024. Next door Lehigh County — home to Allentown — went to Harris, but by five percentage points less than Biden managed in 2020. In Berks County, where Reading is the county seat, Trump did five points better. In Luzerne County, containing Hazelton, he looks set to improve by three or four percentage points.
In short, his appeal to Hispanic Pennsylvanians has clearly succeeded.
The other much-studied bellwether county besides Northampton was Erie County, a jurisdiction Trump carried in 2016 and lost in 2020. This time, he has won with a slim margin. One surprise appears to have come in Centre County — home of Penn State University, a blue dot in a red field — a place Trump never won. Tonight, he leads by four percentage points with 83% of votes in.
All this looks to be a continuation of the political realignment that Trump has ushered into the region since 2016. But what of the elephant in the room: Philadelphia and its four suburban counties? The GOP nominee had fared worse than typical Republicans in the suburbs in 2016, and the trend continued in 2020. In 2024, though, he has stemmed these losses. Trump looks to have lost Chester, Delaware, and Montgomery Counties, but by about the same amount as in 2020, possibly by slightly less. The fourth suburban county, Bucks, is on course to go red.
Philadelphia has always been a mixed tale for Trump. No Republican has won the Democratic stronghold since 1932, but Trump did better there in 2016 than Mitt Romney had in 2012, taking 15.32% of the vote where Romney had 13.97%. In 2020, while doing worse in the rest of the state, Trump improved in Philly, taking 17.86%. This time around, Democrats crowed that Philadelphia would give the party the votes it needed to win. “Voter turnout is extremely high,” Philadelphia Democratic Party Chairman Robert Brady told the press. “I’ve been doing elections for 50 years chair and I’ve been chairman for 40 years and now it’s the highest we’ve ever seen for this point.”
With 89% of the vote reporting, Trump appears to have defied Brady’s boast, taking over 20% of the vote. The old way for Democrats to win Pennsylvania was to run up a big majority in the major cities of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh and hope it was enough to beat the Republican totals in the rest of the state. But Philadelphia’s centrality to Democratic plans is not what it was. It has become the party of the suburbs and now looks to more reliable turnout from those regions than from the city.
Republicans are also reassessing how to win in Pennsylvania, and Trump has shown the path forward for them. Someone unafraid to campaign in Democratic strongholds such as North Philadelphia, Reading, and Allentown can win enough votes there to make the difference statewide.
Trump has been working since 2016 to realign America’s voting blocs, shifting the Republican Party to a multi-ethnic coalition of workers and small businesspeople. That message resounded tonight in Pennsylvania — or at least in enough of it to make the difference in the national race.
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SubscribeThe second last paragraph is not exaggerated. It hits the nail on the head.
I am just embarrassed at this point! It is starting to look a lot like something very deep is broken and we do not know what it is>
Look at that pictue. A case can be made that most of the trouble through history has been caused by little men.
Macron specializes in embarrassing and destabilizing France.
No perrdon may be ELECTED more than twice. But if election were delayed in 2028, President Trump would continue to bec President. Democrats and neolineral media lack imagination
There is no transplant to remedy that .
God, what a depressing photograph at the top!
Such a pair of lightweights.
Measured, unlike our hyperbolic leaders. Macron and Starmer.are birds of a feather with the fractious temperaments to match. Scholz is yesterday’s.man, and Meloni is staying well out of it. Is this really the best we.can do? They say cometh the moment, cometh the man. Candidly I’m sick and tired of waiting for them to arrive and am certainly not holding my breath.
Maybe Kemi is the man you are waiting for … lol … intended in the same sense of the earlier comment calling for Lammy to sort it out!
Europe is governed by committee. And we all know how well committees work. Especially when the committee is also comprised of pampered, weak, socialists afraid of their own shadow and terrified of free speech, muppets who cry at mean words.
Starmer is a disaster for the UK, too, falls under the description above.
You’re all doomed.
Finally, a voice of reason! Nobody, not Trump or Hegseth or Vance, has said the US is withdrawing from NATO, beyond some vague allusions regarding defense spending levels.
Put bluntly, Europe is geo-strategically useful the the US as it keeps Russia off the Atlantic coast, is a significant economic entity, and as the author says is a bridge to other areas of interest, starting with MENA. But, you can spare us the hollow cant words about “shared values” when EU ministers and national leaders tell the US we must censor our own internal debates.
Regarding Europeans as peacekeepers in Ukraine, claiming something that has absolutely no credibility is not a bargaining chip to trade in return for something else, it just makes you look silly. In the mid-1990s, the European members of NATO were keen to intervene in Serbia, on a very small scale compared to what Ukraine would require, a few regiments, really. Even then, before their Cold War militaries had been abandoned and near NATO’s heart, they were incapable of doing so without US logistics. The European militaries have gotten smaller and weaker since then. To claim the ability to occupy and enforce an enormous front between Ukraine and Russia is obviously silly and nobody who matters is fooled.
A combined European force is a laughable idea. Half would insist on their right to have weekends off, several countries would try to establish dominance, some nations would refuse to be a part of it. Neither Europe nor the EU is united. Countries have their own strategic interests and wholly different approaches about how to deal with a neighbouring bully. Some countries border Russia and are now, with US and various European stances, that they will be left to their own sorry fates by the EU, UK and US. Pity the Baltic states and eastern and Central European nations! Pity is all they will receive until the major Western powers have woken up to the fact that they are repeating the same old mistake of appeasement.
I disagree that this is appeasement from the USA. Russia is not the Soviet Union in scale or capability. The EU has the wealth to build a viable defence if it truly felt threatened.I think Nord Stream 1 was built after the Georgia invasion, and N.S. 2 after the Crimea invasion. I could be wrong on the dates but clearly Germany and others had no problem with Putin back then, and Merkel said as much in her biography…This is an EU problem and the USA has a govt debt problem that needs to be addressed so no spending on a non-NATO problem facilitated by the EU for a long time
If Europe wants to be taken seriously, if it wants to be an actor in its own affairs, Europe must have a leader, not “leaders”. Nothing can have more than one leader and be an entity. Many Lilliputians do not make one Gulliver.
Help! We need Lammy to sort this out!
This is the crucial passage. European leaders have over time allowed themselves to forget two important facts.
First, that without American backing the Russians don’t fear the rest of Europe. Whatever the delusions in Brussels, there simply is no single “Europe” to stand against them. A pan-European force would at best be a coalition of reluctantly willing nations which would find it very difficult to maintain the operational integrity, political will or popular support necessary to conduct a long, drawn-out ground war against a nuclear power.
Second, that keeping the Americans onside requires a degree of, let’s call it, diplomatic flattery to be maintained. There has always been an anti-Atlanticist element on the European left, of course. But over the last two decades dismissiveness about America and their contribution to European security has crept into even mainstream political rhetoric across Western Europe. This was careless at best and recklessly delusional at worst. It could only last so long before the Americans shrugged and said, fine, all yours then.
Now, as someone once said, the air is thick with chickens coming home to roost.
I suspect the plan is to get cheap gas on tap again. Britain perhaps not, because they prefer their citizens and business sector to be bankrupted in order to prosecute a proxy war for the Americans.
Yes, one thing is for sure – the EU is not on our side.
Starmer’s phony tough guy posturing is really effeminate. So much of the British elite is like this.
This was a truly embarrassing intervention by 2tk. Doesn’t he understand that the whole point of the war for the Russians is to keep NATO out of Ukraine? Everyday brings fresh evidence that we’ve elected our very own Biden.
At least he had senility as an excuse.
Leaving the Paris meeting, Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany said that a discussion of European troops for Ukraine is “completely premature” and “highly inappropriate” while the war is ongoing.
Why would anyone listen to this guy? On Sunday, he’s history.
The Europeans can cry and pump out anti-US headlines all they want (“The US is trying to divide Europe” was I think the most idiotic this morning -predictably on an Austrian news site – I honestly don’t know why I even bother to look at them anymore): the US want the war ended and simply can’t be messing about waiting for the Europeans to get to a consensus. Which, when they get to it, probably won’t be realistic or useful anyway.
Starmer does come across as pathetic with these promises of troops – but I do still think the role of intermediator between the EU and US is open and necessary.
This is because many Europeans still believe that it’s the EU that has been keeping the peace in Europe all this time: American security guarantees don’t figure that much in their thinking, even among the highly educated. (In fact they’re sometimes even more naive.) So these new developments are literally blowing their minds. Equally, I’m not sure to what extent Americans understand this aspect of the European mindset.
The British – even the pro-EU among you – have never been so romantic about the EU or European security. So I do think the UK government can be useful here as a “translator” of sorts. I think might be a good way of limiting damage to the Transatlantic relationship as I can see now that there is very little understanding of (or will to understand) what the Americans are doing or why, or that they do want the best for us. Just hostile, kneejerk reactions.
You can always tell when Starmer is wrong – his lips move.
He will be remembered not as a futile prime minister but as the man who looked the other way during the rape of 12,000 white girls over a decade and the giant post office scandal.
Starmer would be a great mediator if, and only if,
1) His main aim in life was not to rejoin Europe.
2) He had some character and could use that to impress people. His background means that he needs to define every detail and mediators don’t work in detail, they work in ideas and dreams.
Now the more experienced politicians in Europe will egg him on with nudges and winks to suggest that the UK would be welcomed back into the fold, and send him out to make a fool of himself.
I think you are spot on!
I don’t think anyone wants the UK back inside the EU. In the single market, maybe – but not as a member. Far too much trouble!
I suspect you’re right. EFTA, anyone?
Reading your comment about Scholz being history after Sunday, led me to wonder why Macon called his big meeting for this week rather than next week.
Tentative conclusion–it’s all for show, and was never meant to accomplish anything beyond some photo ops and press statements. As if “soft power” consists of that and need not be backed by anything real.
Sikorski threatening Trump with not getting a Nobel Prize, as if that empty award is really important to the future of America and Trump cares, speaks volumes about the hollow and corrupt European leadership class that cares about personal prestige and wealth, but not about their countries or the people in them. They see Trump, who sacrificed wealth and comfort and prestige–and very nearly his life–because he thinks his country is in trouble and he can help, and they both cannot understand him and see him as a threat if their own people ever notice the difference.
A general comment on the whole charade–it’s almost like 1956, Suez and Hungary, never happened as far as Europe’s (including UK) rulers are concerned. Really, pretty amazing.
I write from Chicago, btw.
The German response shows Starmer does not understand Europe.
But we knew this already. It’s true of all Remainers/Rejoiners.
We’re better off and safer out.
Europe is just one in a long list of things that Starmer doesn’t understand: democracy, economics, Islam …
Let alone Chagos.
You forgot to mention human biology.
Because the establishment are never going to let us find out for ourselves, I don’t know where I stand re your last statement.
However, the first two are absolutely spot on. The level of ignorance of these people is only matched by their emotional incontinence on the subject. They spout borderline nonsense, bearing little or no reality to the more measured tones of those they would have us worship.
Emotional incontinence.
Nice!
Why did Starmer so unnecessarily subject himself to public humiliation by so publicly flying a kite for a UK peacekeeping force backstopped by the USA, something so obviously unacceptable to the USA and Russia even before he opened his mouth?
Starmer and the EU in tandem are slowly adjusting European public opinion to “accept” “irreversible” European weakness. For an elite that actively promotes Global South mass migration as an economic cure for invented economic problems, it makes total sense to adopt the same solution for military defence. But first they need to foster irrefutable “logic” to permit a Global South army to occupy a part of Europe.
And lo and behold, for months the UK Foreign Office and French Ministère de l’Europe et des Affaires Étrangères have been talking about a future European command structure for an army drawn from outside the EU based on experience in Ukraine and peacekeeping missions elsewhere. Globalised mercenaries in all but name.
For Starmer and the EU, it all makes such sense. They are deeply suspicious of Europeans who volunteer to serve, so a Global South army at once relieves them of any dependency on such people and their communities. The financial savings are nice too – these won’t be European-waged soldiers equipped to NATO standards. Any casualties aren’t going to unduly worry European voters, much like Ukraine’s body count hasn’t affected European voters’ support for that conflict. And should a future hypothetical political crisis in a European state “force” the EU to intervene, a non-European army is going to be a much more palatable to deploy… Trebles all round!
Interesting view.
How does this conflict look from the point of view of South America, Africa, and South East Asia?
Is it a top priority? Are they concerned that Russian armies will eventually reach Buenos Aires? Sunak tried to convince African leaders that they were involved in a ‘global war’ against tyranny. A ludicrous suggestion in itself. They ignored him.
As the author says, the EU leaders just had to get together around an antique table in a panelled room under the gaze of old masters and say something in sombre tones to look relevant, as if they were the statesmen of 1914 commanding huge empires and the vast wealth accumulated by thrifty generations. It’s like putting a penny into those Edwardian seaside animatronic amusements on Brighton pier and watching models move to simulate a haunted house or what the butler saw.
An army from elsewhere under a European command structure looks rather colonial. Askaris with British officers.
Great simile at the end of your second paragraph!
Starmer the Stiff would make a half-decent butler, too.
I mostly agree, except where you write that European weakness is inevitable. It seems highly likely, but it is a choice. Europe has the resources in people, wealth, geography, and technology, to be stronger. Compare the EU’s potential to Russia. European elites have so far chosen to be weak–and look likely to continue. But it IS a choice.
What “potential” does Europe have over Russia? There no natural resources over here, the people don’t do anything, there’s no wealth other that what the bond markets provide. Ok, there’s some nice holiday resorts.
Oh, I agree weakness is a choice however, the alternative has a rapidly closing window of opportunity. The halving of Europe’s global economic clout in just a generation and the near destruction of its advanced technology sectors will be very hard to reverse.
Don’t expect civlized behavior as the West understands it from soldiers recruited from the global South to protect Europe.
The EU statelets and other European countries might as well stop pretending to have any influence in this matter. Only after the US, Russia and Ukraine have made their decision, can they join in with the aim of trying to look important.
I wonder if Russia will also insist that Ukraine can’t join the EU … given the endless push for an EU Army by the rapacious EU Commission.
Putin just said it was OK for Ukraine to join the EU, but not NATO. Maybe he read the 2013-4 TAA, half of which is to protect the EU from Ukraine’s cheap food imports. Besides, like almost everybody, he doesn’t really understand the EU. ‘ How many divisions has the Pope?’
From what Putin has said previously, it looks like he thinks it’s just an economic bloc, a common market.
At the same time, how would the EU define Ukraine as a country if there were still Ukrainian territory under Russian occupation? Scotland, like Catalonia, was defined as a region by the EU, not a country.
Being illegally annexed, what status would the EU accord the three Ukrainian oblasts? Would Kiev have to give them up to gain EU membership? Or would the ‘colleagues’ in Brussels have to treat them as breakaway regions, invalidating their exclusion from Ukraine’s EU membership. If Brussels accepted their separation, what might that imply for Catalonia?
If Ukraine did join the EU, it would be a case of exchanging the possibility of once again having a stern master for the certainty of having a more benign one. And instead of being broken up into protectorates the country would retain, well, some sort of sovereignty.