Who are Pennsylvania’s undecided voters? | PA 2024 Newsletter

📅 There are 66 days until Election Day.

In this edition:

— Julia Terruso, Aseem Shukla, Fallon Roth, Jeremy Roebuck, Anna Orso, Oona Goodin-Smith, pa2024@inquirer.com

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We were inspired this week to look deeper into a question from one of our readers, who inquired during a Reddit AMA about Pennsylvania’s undecided voters, asking how anyone could still be on the fence during such a polarized time in politics. National political reporter Julia Terruso explains:

Let’s talk about the elusive undecided voter.

Presidential election polls in Pennsylvania are stubbornly deadlocked, and with less than three months to go, some voters still don’t know who they are supporting — or even if they will turn out.

While that might be hard to fathom, or even exasperating to the overwhelming majority of decided voters, it’s the reality for a group of between 2% and 4% of voters. Why the range? The first thing to keep in mind when you’re looking at polling of undecided voters is whether the poll is of registered voters or likely voters. Some polls, like Emerson College, have started shifting to poll likely voters as the election nears to winnow out people who are unlikely to vote at all. The latest Emerson College poll showed about 2% of Pennsylvania’s likely voters are undecided.

» READ MORE: Pennsylvania’s undecided voters are a small group — but they could have a big impact on the 2024 election

That’s fewer undecided than we had here in August 2020, but still enough to be determinative in a state that was won by a little more than 1 percentage point in 2020 and a little less in 2016. Spencer Kimball, Emerson’s pollster, tells us about ¾ of those voters are independents. The group is also disproportionately white and between the ages of 30 and 39. It’s a small sample size, but more of them voted for Trump in 2020 than Biden. Another 3% of voters said they were backing independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has since withdrawn from the ballot in Pennsylvania.

With as little as a month left until mail ballots start going out, Trump and Harris will likely focus on their bases as well as undecideds.

But it’s difficult to target undecided voters as one bloc, since they often differ on why they’re undecided. Some are just not paying attention yet, or are feeling disengaged with politics more broadly.

Cherry Lang, a 20-year-old registered Democrat from Norristown, is in the latter camp, frustrated with the political system and conflicted about what to do in November.

“Honestly, I try to stay away from politics because I find it very depressing,” she said.

Lang works two jobs and lives with her parents as she tries to determine her path forward. “My generation, we aren’t able to really afford to do anything, and I don’t think either candidate is gonna make that change for my generation and that really sucks.”

📬 Are you an undecided voter? Email us – we’d love to hear from you.

💻 Read more of our answers to your Reddit questions about the election — from Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’ effectiveness here, how you can assess political polls and data for yourself, and the “Mount Rushmore” of Pennsylvania counties likely to decide the election.

🟣 Trump is in Johnstown today — a purple city that narrowly went to President Joe Biden in 2020 and Trump in 2016, located in a red swath of Western Pennsylvania’s Cambria County. Said one GOP official: “The election will be decided on who gets the vote out.”

💵 Pennsylvania voters say the economy is the issue most important to them this election, and the commonwealth’s lagging post-pandemic rebound could have implications at the ballot box.

🔔 Trump and Harris are campaigning on very different economic agendas. Here’s how each of their plans on the cost of goods, taxes, housing, and fossil fuels could shape Philadelphia’s economy.

🙋‍♀️ All four of Philadelphia’s collar counties have more women who are of voting age than men. And as Philly’s suburbs will likely be key in the 2024 election, suburban women are poised to play a potentially decisive role in determining the next president.

✉️ A Pennsylvania county must tell voters if their mail ballots cannot be counted, allowing them the chance to cast a provisional ballot, a judge ordered. The county’s board of elections, the judge said, “clearly violated the statutory right to allow a person checks and balances against the government.”

❌ Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will not be on Pennsylvania’s presidential ballot in November, but will stay on ballots in several other key swing states, after suspending his campaign and endorsing Trump.

🏢 The Montgomery County man charged in a rare case of election fraud is a notorious 62-year-old landlord who has been cutting corners in Philadelphia for years, an Inquirer investigation found.

🎤 We’re now passing the mic to our colleague, data reporter Aseem Shukla, to talk about the growing support for Trump in Pennsylvania’s Latino-majority cities:

So where might Trump do better in Pennsylvania than he did in 2020 — or 2016? One group seems particularly promising: the state’s majority-Latino areas.

Here’s the thing: even as nearly all of Pennsylvania shifted a little to a lot leftward in 2020, pushing Biden narrowly over the top in this closely-divided state, one type of place consistently moved in the opposite direction: majority-Latino precincts.

It wasn’t just in one place. We saw this in Philly, Norristown, York, Lancaster — really anywhere where Latino residents make up the biggest chunk of the voting population. But nowhere was this more noticeable than Reading, Pennsylvania’s largest majority-Latino city, where 68% of residents are Latino — and where Biden hemorrhaged votes in 2020 compared to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, while Trump gained a lot.

Like other majority-Latino parts of the state, Reading remained heavily Democratic, to the extent that my colleague Sean Collins Walsh had a hard time finding avowed Trump supporters. But the proof is in the data: plenty of Latino voters switched teams.

Will they continue to move to the right? If that trend continues even a little bit, that could spell trouble for Harris in Pennsylvania, where every few hundred votes count.

📈 Western Pa.: This group of Philadelphians is not inclined to say nice things about the other side of the commonwealth, but we can throw our rivals a bone when it’s warranted. Western Pennsylvania feels like the center of the state’s political activity this week. Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance was in Erie Wednesday, Trump will be in Johnstown today, and on Monday, Harris and Biden will both head to Pittsburgh. Fair to say the region’s stock is up right now. (Though that doesn’t extend to the last-in-their-division Pirates. Go Phils.)

📉 Dave McCormick: It’s been a tough end to the week for the Republican U.S. Senate candidate after he confused Philadelphia, Miss. for the City of Brotherly Love while sharing a news clip on X from a local Mississippi news station, seeking to blame Harris and opponent, Sen. Bob Casey, for border security issues. It was an unfortunate slip-up, given how McCormick has fought “carpetbagger” accusations from Casey’s campaign and other Democrats, who now have capitalized on this recent mistake. (McCormick owns a house in Pittsburgh and grew up in Northeastern Pennsylvania.) It’s almost reminiscent of the last election, when former Republican Senate candidate Mehmet Oz, facing similar allegations of being an outsider, mispronounced grocery store Redner’s as “Wegner’s” and called a veggie tray “crudité.”

🎤 And now, we pass the mic to our colleague, courts reporter Jeremy Roebuck, to answer a reader who emailed us to ask about the pending legal challenges against Trump – and whether they will affect his ability to campaign, win, or serve as president:

The short answer: No. At this point, it’s exceedingly unlikely that any of the criminal cases filed against Trump will derail his ability to campaign, and if elected, his ability to serve.

It’s worth noting that, unlike other public offices, there’s no restriction barring a convicted felon — even one in prison — from running for or becoming president. And if he wins in November, Trump could kill off any federal charges he’s facing with the stroke of a pen. But for now, the cases against him do present an ongoing headache — if not an imminent threat to his campaign.

Here’s where things stand in each:

🏛️ New York hush money case: Trump is set to be sentenced Sept. 18 in Manhattan for his conviction for falsifying business records to cover-up hush money payments made to a porn star with whom he’s accused of having an affair. However, his lawyers are looking to get that date pushed, arguing that they need more time to review their appellate options. If that date does stick, Trump could be sentenced to anything from community service or house arrest to up to four years in prison. But whatever punishment he receives, he likely won’t have to serve it until after he’s exhausted his appeals — a process that could take years.

🏛️ Federal election interference case: Special Counsel Jack Smith filed a revised version of his indictment in this matter — a series of charges tied to Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election — on Tuesday, reviving a case that had previously lain dormant for months. The superseding indictment narrows the case, in line with the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in last month that Trump, as president, should be granted broad immunity from prosecution for actions he took in office. But Smith’s team is confident it can still move forward to secure a conviction, based solely on actions Trump took in his capacity as a candidate for the presidency. U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, has scheduled a hearing next month to determine a schedule for the case moving forward. She’s repeatedly made clear she won’t let Trump’s campaign calendar dictate her timeline. Still, it’s unlikely that the case would reach a trial stage before November.

🏛️ Georgia election interference case: The election interference case brought against Trump and key allies in Georgia isn’t going anywhere fast. Disrupted earlier this year by questions of whether Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis should be disqualified from overseeing the case due to a romantic relationship she had with a prosecutor working in her office, the matter is now awaiting a decision by the Georgia state appeals courts, which have scheduled oral arguments for December. It will likely take months after that for the appeals court to issue its ruling. And even then, the case will have to be revamped to some degree to address the U.S. Supreme Court’s immunity decision.

🏛️ Federal classified documents case: While a federal judge dismissed this case — alleging Trump took reams of classified documents from the White House when he decamped to Mar-a-Lago in 2021 — last month, Smith, the special prosecutor, is appealing that ruling and hopes to revive the case. Even if he succeeds, don’t expect to see a trial in this matter before next year.

📮 Do you have your own question about the election? Email us back and we’ll try to answer it in a future newsletter.

What they said: The Harris and Trump campaigns have sparred over whether the microphones should be constantly live during the upcoming presidential debate in Philadelphia. The Trump team wants the mics muted when candidates aren’t speaking, but the Harris campaign does not.

Said a Harris campaign spokesperson: “Both candidates have publicly made clear their willingness to debate with unmuted mics for the duration of the debate to fully allow for substantive exchanges between the candidates - but it appears Donald Trump is letting his handlers overrule him. Sad!”

What they meant: “We hope Trump interrupts or attacks Harris, so she can take a swipe right back.”

If Trump interrupts Harris, it could give her an opportunity to show she is “ready to deal” with it and embrace her prosecutorial style of debating. While Trump was mulling over participating in the debate, Harris dared Trump to “say it to my face.” She also has a history of creating viral moments on the debate stage, coining the line “Mr. Vice President, I’m speaking” during the 2020 vice presidential debate.

➡️ The heated battle over the hot mics at the Sept. 10 presidential debate — hosted by ABC and set at Philly’s very own National Constitution Center.

➡️ This weekend in Pennsylvania, as Trump heads to Johnstown to bolster support from white working-class voters, while Harris and Biden make a Labor Day pitch to union workers in Pittsburgh.

🗳️ One last thing: The deadline to register to vote in Pennsylvania is Oct. 21, and Oct. 15 in New Jersey. Here’s everything you need to know about your registration.

As always, thank you for reading. We wish everyone a happy Labor Day weekend, and we’ll see you in your inbox next Friday. 👋