Biden and Trump are both showing love to Wilkes-Barre, Pa. Here’s why.

Within a matter days, both President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump are touching down in Wilkes-Barre, in Northeastern Pennsylvania. With a population of fewer than 41,000, it’s far from the biggest city in the state — it’s not even in the top 20 — but it carries political and symbolic heft.

Wilkes-Barre is the county seat of Luzerne County, which itself has come to symbolize the dramatic political shifts in parts of Pennsylvania, along with similar areas in Michigan and Wisconsin, that helped Trump become president in 2016. Democrats have been trying to recover their standing in such small cities and rural areas ever since.

Luzerne is part of a region with a long history of culturally conservative, union-friendly Democrats, one that swung sharply from Barack Obama in 2012 to Trump in 2016, reshaping Pennsylvania’s presidential politics.

It’s still a battleground area within a battleground state, though, helping explain why Biden spoke there Tuesday and Trump is arriving Saturday for a rally with GOP Senate nominee Mehmet Oz and State Sen. Doug Mastriano, the party’s nominee for governor.

While Trump lagged behind other Republicans in some parts of the state in 2020, he proved far more popular in Northeastern Pennsylvania. He won close to 57% of the vote in Luzerne County, showing an enduring appeal there, despite Biden’s efforts to win back white, working-class voters.

If there’s anywhere in Pennsylvania where Trump could help the GOP’s candidates, it’s likely in the northeast, where other Republicans haven’t matched his appeal — though it’s also the kind of place where Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, the Democratic Senate nominee, is betting he can improve his party’s results.

The region has significant personal meaning for Biden, too: Scranton, in neighboring Lackawanna County, is his childhood home. And while losing Luzerne in 2020, Biden improved the Democratic edge in Lackawanna. (The Democratic margin still fell far short of its pre-Trump levels, though). Scranton and Wilkes-Barre share the same media market, and the region is hosting a number of competitive federal and state races this fall.

“Twenty years ago, Republicans would not have put on their dance card, ‘Let’s go to Wilkes-Barre,’” Nicholas said. “If you were going to [Northeastern Pennsylvania] at all, you were going to a more rural area.”

In many ways, the region is the mirror image of the Philadelphia suburbs, which shifted away from the GOP and were key to Biden’s 2020 win.

Even after the current and former presidents leave, Luzerne and Lackawanna will be places to watch in November.

Read our full story: Biden and Trump visits have Pennsylvania elections back in the national spotlight