John Fetterman outperformed Joe Biden all across Pennsylvania

John Fetterman’s path to the U.S. senate crossed through every part of Pennsylvania’s political geography. He made gains in staunchly pro-Trump rural areas, while also holding onto the increasingly Democratic Philadelphia suburbs and turning out voters in the state’s two biggest cities, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.

By the time the race was called, it was clear: Fetterman’s “every county, every vote” strategy had played out almost everywhere. In all but three of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties, the Democrat’s margin of victory exceeded that of Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election.

The Democratic nominee for governor, Josh Shapiro, won by even larger margins, likely bolstering other Democrats on the ballot, including Fetterman.

“If you want to be a successful party over time in these big races … you cannot fail to get your [base] counties to get the maximum vote,” said Sen. Bob Casey (D., Pa.). “You've got to maximize that vote and you've got to do that really well … but then you also have to have an effort made in these other counties."

In a state as huge and politically divided as Pennsylvania, that's an expensive and expansive task that requires reaching voters across several different media markets on TV and in their communities in VFW halls, community colleges, and big city parks.

Republican Senate nominee Mehmet Oz’s strategy relied partly on winning back some of the vote in Philadelphia’s population-rich collar counties. In the final months of his campaign, Oz portrayed himself as a more moderate politician, promising to bring “balance” to Washington. But his appearance with Trump days before the election and lingering anti-Trump sentiment in those areas likely hurt him.

The vote count isn’t final: Mail and provisional ballots from a handful of counties continue to trickle in. But unofficial results as of November 11 should be close to the certified results.

In Philadelphia, where Oz spent a great deal of time campaigning on crime, Fetterman narrowly outperformed Biden.

In the suburban counties, Oz only exceeded Trump’s vote share in Chester County. In Montgomery, Delaware, and Bucks counties, Republicans’ position eroded further.

Outside of the Philly area, Oz managed to outrun Trump only in exurban Pike and Monroe Counties, home to many New York and New Jersey transplants.

Everywhere else, especially in Western Pennsylvania and the Wyoming Valley in Northeastern Pennsylvania, Fetterman managed to cut into Oz’s numbers.

Fetterman Outran Biden in Every Kind of County

To understand Fetterman’s win and compare it with prior elections, The Inquirer grouped Pennsylvania’s counties into five categories based on past voting patterns and population size:

• Big urban counties

• The Philly suburbs

• Counties with small- and medium-sized cities

• Exurbs and medium-sized rural counties

• Small rural counties

No category is perfect , but we aimed to find the best fits for each county.

Consistent with longstanding political trends, dense urban areas had the highest Democratic vote margins and rural areas had the lowest. But the more Republican-leaning counties also saw the heaviest movement from Biden to Fetterman.

The big urban counties: Philly and Allegheny

Philadelphia and Allegheny County, home to Pittsburgh, are Pennsylvania’s two biggest metropolitan areas.

For decades, both counties have put up sizable numbers for Democrats. But because they are so heavily Democratic, their influence is less a matter of how they vote than of how many voters turn out.

While Democrats regularly exceed 70% of the vote in these counties, turnout in Philly in recent years has sometimes lagged the rest of the state.

With a few thousand votes left to count in Philly, it’s already clear the “big cities” county cluster swung back left this year, driven by Fetterman winning big in his home base of Allegheny.

That isn’t surprising. But the size of his Allegheny County win had Republicans on edge.

“We need to figure out how to do better in one of the largest counties in the state,” Harrisburg-based GOP consultant Chris Nicholas said. “It looks like we got maybe 35% of the vote … and that’s not enough.”

Nicholas said those losses concern him more than Fetterman’s pick-ups in more rural places, which he thinks had much to do with Fetterman’s unique candidacy.

“I think the next election, Cameron County will go right back” to its margin with Biden, Nicholas said.

Fetterman was a longtime mayor of Braddock, in Allegheny County, and the hometown effect likely had an impact across Western Pennsylvania, strategists and voters have said — particularly against Oz, who moved to Pennsylvania from New Jersey ahead of his Senate run. Even in small towns outside of Pittsburgh, voters talked about seeing Fetterman at community events, along Pittsburgh’s many river walking trails, or at the grocery store.

The Philadelphia suburbs

The four Philadelphia collar counties were once fertile ground for moderate Republicans. In 2016, Sen. Pat Toomey (R., Pa.) put up a strong showing here.

But these counties are becoming solidly and reliably Democratic.

Few Republicans have endured, save for U.S. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick in Bucks County.

Fetterman and Oz both had their largest rallies in these suburbs. Oz spoke to almost 3,000 supporters in Bucks County in September, the same month Fetterman packed a Montgomery County Community College gymnasium for a “Women for Fetterman” event.

While Oz focused heavily on crime at his rally, Fetterman’s event was all about abortion rights. Voters listed both as issues they cared about in polls leading up to the election. But early exit polls from Pennsylvania showed abortion may have been particularly motivating.

“If you don’t have autonomy over your own body, I don’t know what can get much worse than that,” said Sylvia Stawowczyk, 32, after voting for Fetterman with her four-year-old son and baby daughter. “It affects not just women but people who are already at a disadvantage.”

Counties with small- and medium-sized cities

Pennsylvania has dozens of historically important smaller cities.

We grouped together the counties that are home to those urban areas: Lackawanna and Luzerne Counties, which contain Scranton and Wilkes-Barre in the northeast; Dauphin and Cumberland Counties, which comprise the Harrisburg area; Lehigh and Northampton Counties, home to Allentown and Bethlehem;; Westmoreland County outside of Pittsburgh; Erie County in the far northwest; and York, Lancaster, and Berks Counties.

By and large, these counties consist of smaller, Democratic cities that give way quickly to Republican-leaning suburbs and then heavily-GOP rural areas. Many are microcosms of Pennsylvania’s political geography.

But the blue areas are small relative to the red areas, and for that reason, many of these counties lean Republican, even if they remain competitive.

Fetterman carried a few of them. His pro-union, populist message likely appealed here. Erie, Lackawanna, Dauphin, Lehigh, and Northampton Counties all went blue. And Fetterman made a strong play for Luzerne and Cumberland Counties.

Particularly notable was Fetterman outrunning Biden in Lackawanna County, where Biden was born in Scranton.

Despite their policy positions being largely aligned, Biden and Fetterman are very different politicians. Fetterman consistently pitched himself as an atypical candidate, more working-class everyman than buttoned-up coastal elite. That likely helped him connect with voters in these counties even more effectively than Biden, who has long claimed the Electric City as his first home.

Exurbs and medium-sized rural counties

This group of counties contains small population centers as well as the exurban overflow from big cities. It includes the southwestern counties of Washington, Beaver, Butler, Fayette, and Mercer, none of which have a major urban center but share a Pittsburgh-area industrial heritage; Cambria and Blair Counties, which encompass the small city of Altoona; Lycoming in the north; and the southeastern exurbs of Monroe, Schuylkill, Lebanon, Adams, and Franklin Counties.

This cluster also includes Centre County, which contains the left-leaning Penn State campus and its surroundings but is otherwise rural.

With the exception of Centre and Monroe, this grouping is solidly Republican. But Democrats have put up respectable showings in strong wave years such as 2018, when formerly Democratic strongholds in the southwest helped re-elect Casey to the Senate.

Those southwestern exurbs also swung heavily toward Fetterman: Armstrong and Fayette Counties saw some of the state’s heaviest Democratic swings.

Small rural counties

The largest group of counties consists of Pennsylvania’s most rural and least populous places. These are the tiny counties of the Appalachians and the rural north: Armstrong, Bedford, Bradford, Cameron, Carbon, Clarion, Clearfield, Clinton, Columbia, Crawford, Elk, Forest, Fulton, Greene, Huntingdon, Indiana, Jefferson, Juniata, Lawrence, McKean, Mifflin, Montour, Northumberland, Perry, Pike, Potter, Snyder, Somerset, Sullivan, Susquehanna, Tioga, Union, Venango, Warren, Wayne, and Wyoming Counties.

This long list hardly forms a monolith. Some counties are agricultural, others post-industrial, some like Pike are exurban, and others are mostly wilderness. But they are united in being heavily Republican. And while each county is individually small, they together comprise 12% of the statewide vote, and nearly a fifth of the statewide Republican vote.

That means they are also united in having the most ground for Republicans to give up — and on a percentage-point basis, that’s what happened. Although Fetterman lost these counties handily, he kept his losses contained. His biggest improvements compared with Biden came from this group of counties.

‘Every county, every vote’

Both parties will likely study for some time Fetterman’s win in a state as key as Pennsylvania. Many factors go into winning political office, but the bottom line is you have to piece together enough votes statewide — and Fetterman did that all across the map.