How will Pennsylvania’s voting groups shape the 2024 election? Highlights from our Reddit AMA
Inquirer reporters Julia Terruso and Aseem Shukla took questions from readers and redditors about what past voting trends in the crucial swing state could predict for November.
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With just about two months until Election Day, Pennsylvania and Philly are at the center of the 2024 presidential election and will play a key role in determining which party wins the White House. We analyzed voting shifts among five key groups — and whether those trends continue or reverse will be key to who wins the state.
The Inquirer hosted an AMA (“Ask Me Anything”) in collaboration with the r/politics subreddit to answer readers’ questions about this analysis.
Here are the highlights from national political reporter Julia Terruso and data reporter Aseem Shukla. Some questions and answers have been edited for length, clarity, and tone.
I would love to know the profiles of undecided voters at this point. The choices seem so starkly different that I just can’t imagine how anyone can be on the fence right now.
Julia Terruso: Undecided voters exist, but they make up a very small portion of the voters out there (about 2% in a recent Emerson College poll of Pennsylvania). Polls have a hard time capturing undecided voters, because those voters are often not paying attention — and that means they aren’t responding to polls.
That said, in a state like Pennsylvania, where the presidency was decided by a little more than 1 percentage point in 2020 and a little less in 2016, they still matter. I think you will see both candidates trying to pull out their bases and focus on turnout, though, given that mail voting starts soon and the runway to November is short.
That’s also because it’s almost impossible to target undecided voters as one bloc.
There’s an instinct to think of undecided voters as politically engaged moderates wrestling with policy contrasts. That is almost never the case. Most are just not paying attention yet. I checked in with undecided voters just before the midterms in 2022, and you’ll see their reasons for being undecided ran the gamut. We’re going to do something similar soon for undecideds in the presidential race, and I expect a somewhat similar mixed bag response.
Do you think that picking Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as the Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate will generate more votes in red PA, than if Harris had picked Gov. Josh Shapiro?
Julia Terruso: Really hard to say. Gov. Josh Shapiro out-performed President Joe Biden’s 2020 results across the state, including in rural areas, when he was elected governor in 2022. As we mentioned in another answer, polls show some supporters of former President Donald Trump also support Shapiro. That said, Shapiro’s hometown and political roots are in Montgomery County, which is a largely middle and upper middle class suburban county. So Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s personal story and upbringing certainly meshes more closely with your average rural Pennsylvania voter.
People really do vote for the top of the ticket, though, so I’m not sure it makes a huge difference. And some Democrats were arguing after Shapiro was passed over that having him available to stump for her in the state (instead of traveling the country as a VP nominee) could be a benefit to turning out voters for her in Pennsylvania.
A genie offers you the ability to see future precinct-level results for the 2024 presidential race from one Pennsylvania county. Which one do you select?
Aseem Shukla: I love this question. I don’t know that I have a single answer, but here’s how I would think about picking a place. It comes down to what type of political geographies are represented in a county.
Of the five groups we’re looking at, I don’t expect huge movements in two of them: Rural areas are likely to remain very red, and white college-educated areas are likely to remain very blue. Both groups have pretty high turnout, too. So counties that disproportionately represent these areas aren’t as interesting.
The other three groups — suburban areas, white working-class urban areas, and non-white urban areas — are all interesting for different reasons. Will moderate, middle-class suburbanites like Harris as much as Biden, or even more so? Was the white working-class shift toward Biden specific to his candidacy? Are Black and Hispanic voters, particularly young men, still skeptical of Democrats with Harris at the top of the ticket — and will they turn out to vote for her?
For that reason, I’d want to pick a county that tells us something about each of these groups. All of the following counties have plenty of areas that fit this bill:
Berks
Dauphin
Lehigh
Luzerne
What’s common to these places? A mix of rural, urban, and suburban, not too prosperous, including some dense cities with Black and Hispanic neighborhoods and white working-class urban neighborhoods. All of them are in the Eastern half of the state, outside the Philly area, and anchor at least one mid-sized city. Don’t make me pick just one!
What are the concerns of male Hispanic and Black voters that are making them reticent to vote for Harris? And does that mean they’ll stay home?
Julia Terruso: So I think we’re still getting the full picture on how Harris does with these groups. Early polling has her regaining ground that Biden had lost, but still struggling to reach the levels met by her Democratic predecessors.
While Trump has made a concerted effort to reach Black and Latino voters and has boosted his numbers somewhat compared to his standing last cycle, there are not huge numbers of Black and Latino voters defecting to him. The bigger concern for Democrats is definitely that these voters won’t show up.
The majority of voters Black and Latino voters list the economy as their top priority in polls, and Trump continues to poll better on the issue than Harris. For some Latino voters, immigration is an issue, which again, Trump polls better on. But I think it’ll be an ongoing question we try to answer. The gender split is really interesting –- and existed before Harris became the nominee!
Is there a single resource that one can follow to easily get a sense of how the polls look in Pa.?
Aseem Shukla: For now, the best free source remains FiveThirtyEight. (If you want to splurge a bit, Nate Silver’s paid Substack “Silver Bulletin” is also a good source).
Just remember to touch grass a bit; the polls are likely to remain close, at least for now, and it’s best not to get caught up in any one poll’s results. That said, if you squint at crosstabs assiduously across major polls, you can get a sense of which groups are shifting. The Inquirer worked with The New York Times and Siena College on a Pennsylvania poll released in May, and will do another poll in September.
My feeling is this will come down to a few counties in Pa. What is the “Mount Rushmore” of counties in Pa. that will most likely decide this election? Also, is there data on the ground games of both the Trump and Harris campaigns?
Julia Terruso: If we’re talking about the bellwether counties in the state, then a good trio to look at are the three “pivot” counties that flipped from voting for former President Barack Obama in 2012 to former President Donald Trump in 2016. Those are Erie, Northampton, and Luzerne Counties. But I’d also throw in Bucks County, which is reliably purple and the only county in the Southeast that is still represented by a Republican in Congress.
But since every vote in every county matters, the project we just did on the five kinds of places that win you Pa., aims to look at the types of places that win or lose you the state. It’s a comprehensive look at where both parties are gaining and losing support across the state among different voting blocs.
As for field offices, Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign has set up 36 in the state, including several in Philadelphia and its surrounding suburban counties. Trump’s campaign was slower to set things up here, but is now working in pretty close partnership with the Republican Party’s county-level offices across the state.
What questions should curious voters who consume an above average amount of political media be asking about polls and data? When you take a swing state, like Pa., what do you hone in on, and why?
Aseem Shukla: This is a great question and it’s hard to know what to ask. We aren’t pollsters ourselves — but The Inquirer is working this year with pollsters at the NYT and Siena College. Broadly, here are some things to pay attention to:
What is the pollster’s general track record? Do they tend to get things right a reasonable amount of the time? FiveThirtyEight remains a great free resource for this.
Who sponsored the poll? A lot of publicly released polls are from reputable non-partisan outlets (like colleges or public research firms), but many are from companies that are aligned with a particular partisan campaign. Again, FiveThirtyEight has this info.
How did they take the poll? It’s reasonable to expect differences in online vs. phone polls, for instance. Each have their advantages and disadvantages. Phone polls were historically the gold standard, but not everyone picks up the phone anymore.
Are they distinguishing between likely and registered voters? This is a little esoteric because each polling house has different ways of estimating who’s going to vote and who isn’t, but it’s worth paying attention to the differences.
When was the poll taken? This election cycle has had, uh, a lot of news, and so the period the poll was in the field does matter.
Here’s something NOT to pay too much attention to: How realistic are the crosstabs? It’s sometimes hard to resist doing this (we report on crosstabs ourselves) but remember that each poll is just one poll, and the more niche a group you want to look at (e.g. “Hispanics in the suburbs” or “young Black men”), the more you should resist putting too much store in what you see. The sample sizes are small at this level and there’s the potential for lots of sampling error.