Republicans scored historic victories in Pennsylvania, winning the state’s valuable presidential primary, posting a two-seat gain in the U.S. House of Representatives delegation and capturing all four state offices on the ballot, including a seat in the U.S. Senate.
HARRISBURG, Pa. – Republicans scored historic victories in Pennsylvania this week, winning the state’s valuable presidential primary, gaining two seats in the U.S. House of Representatives delegation and taking all four offices across the state list, including a seat in the U.S. Senate.
The strong performance means Donald Trump has won Pennsylvania in two of three attempts, after Republicans lost six consecutive presidential elections there.
Something similar happened in the other ‘blue wall’ states of Michigan and Wisconsin, in the Rust Belt states, where Trump again prevailed after his defeat in 2020. Still, Democrats held on in key Senate races in Wisconsin and Michigan, albeit hardly, and the results played a major role. different in every state.
The Republican victories were most pronounced in Pennsylvania, a state that was early labeled as this year’s leading swing state, where deep dissatisfaction with the status quo surfaced, more often than not to the Republicans’ advantage.
Voters had the economy on their minds.
About a third of voters nationwide, including in blue wall states, said they felt like their families were “falling behind” financially. AP VoteCasta survey of more than 120,000 voters across the country. That was an increase from 2020, when about 2 in 10 felt this way. In 2020, a majority of financially strapped voters voted for the president Joe Bidenbut this year about two-thirds supported Trump.
Berwood Yost, director of the Center for Opinion Research at Franklin & Marshall College in Pennsylvania, said Democrats faced a lot of pushback among swing voters: their deteriorating personal finances, fueled by inflation, and the feeling that many blamed Biden.
Yost said vice president Kamala Harris ran a strong campaign, but could not overcome the headwinds.
“The mood among the electorate was so negative that they took it out on the incumbent party,” Yost said.
Some voters’ memories of Trump’s presidency improved over time. VoteCast shows that only 40% of Pennsylvania voters said they approved of Biden’s performance, while 54% said they approved of Trump when he was president. Four years ago, Trump’s approval rating 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 in 2020 by just over 1% to Biden.
Trump won Wisconsin by less than a point, as he did in 2016, after losing it by about half a percentage point in 2020.
In Michigan, Trump won by about 80,000 votes — many times his nearly 11,000-vote victory in 2016 and about half the margin of his 2020 loss to Biden.
In Pennsylvania, Trump gained ground in Democratic-friendly counties statewide, including Democratic bastion Philadelphia and the densely populated suburbs that rallied hard against Trump in 2016 and 2020.
In Trump-friendly suburbs and rural areas, his margins grew across the board.
His strength also helped David McCormick defeat the three-term Democratic senator. Bob Caseysay the Republicans, allowing them to retake the Senate seat from the Republican Party lost in 2022 then Democrat Johannes Fetterman replaced retiring Republican Senator 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 Republican majority, giving the GOP a valuable boost in its fight for control of the House of Representatives. Retain delegates.
And for the first time since the attorney general’s office gained elected office in 1980, Republicans will hold their position all three driving offices statewide.
That includes treasurer, auditor general and attorney general, a position that was thrust into the national spotlight four years ago when Trump filed a lawsuit seeking to overturn his 2020 defeat.
Legislative majorities remained unchanged: Republicans retained their majority in the Senate with six seats, while Democrats retained their majority in the House of Representatives with one seat.
With more Republicans in the Capitol, the 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 Republicans to the stage.
Trump survived one assassination attempt in western Pennsylvania during the summer – and then returned there for a second rally – and drew a crowd to a McDonald’s in a politically divided suburb of Philadelphia, where he put on an apron and tried his hand at the chip station.
Trump campaigned in conservative white areas, in heavily black Philadelphia and in a fast-growing belt of cities from Lancaster to Reading and Allentown where Latinos are settling, and AP VoteCast showed him benefiting from modest swings among traditionally Democratic voters.