A key Keystone: the race for Pennsylvania

The Economist. Mississippi is the furthest south. Much of Indiana used to be called Louisiana. Florida marks what was once the city's northern boundary. And Ohio hugs East Potomac Park. But of all the streets in Washington, DC named after the nation's 50 states, The most famous, the wide grand boulevard that links the Capitol building and the White House, is called Pennsylvania Avenue. No one knows for sure why it was the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania which was awarded the crème de la crème of DC streets. The most likely explanation is that the nation's capital having been moved from Philadelphia to DC, it was intended as a consolation prize. Pennsylvania Avenue is the road of the White House. And for Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, the road to the White House is likely to lie via Pennsylvania's 19 Electoral College votes. With 32 days to go until the 2024 election, I'm Jon Prado, and this is Checks and Balance from The Economist. Each week, we take one big theme shaping American politics and explore it in depth. Today, who's winning in Pennsylvania? Whoever captures Pennsylvania will probably be elected president. According to The Economist's forecast model, it's the most likely tipping point state. We've traveled to 3 different parts of the Commonwealth to assess how the campaign is going and to try to read the electoral tea leaves. What will it take to win in Pennsylvania in November? With me this week to discuss what's going on in the Keystone State in the last few weeks of this election are Charlotte Howard and Idris Khaloun. We've all been to Pennsylvania recently, but we didn't manage to go together, which seems like a bit of a shame. But that does mean we covered a lot of ground. Charlotte, how are you doing? What's going on? I can see you're back in New York. What's up there?

I'm doing well. We haven't discussed Eric Adams on the pod yet. As a New York resident, I'm waiting to see when or whether our mayor will decide that he should no longer be the mayor, given the range of charges brought against him by the federal government.

It's an amazing story. It does feel a bit like D.C. in the '80s. Idris, how are you doing? What's up in Washington?

Washington is good. I just got back from Pittsburgh, which I really like. I spent a summer there many years ago, interning for the local paper. I really like it. I think it's one of these charming cities that has a lot of beauty that people don't appreciate. There's something about the hills and the bridges and everything. And also, it peaked at the right time, which is important. You want a city that peaked around Art Deco time, not a city that peaked around Brutalism time. That's very bad.

This episode of the podcast is not sponsored by the Pennsylvania Tourist Board, but it might as well be, because the part of the state that I went to, Pennsylvania 8, is very, very pretty, particularly at this time of year. Beautiful fall color and just all around a very nice place to be.

America's very beautiful.

This is true. Before we get into it, though, this is the last episode of Checks and Balance that we're making free to listen to. If you want to carry on listening to us until the election and beyond, then you'll need to be a subscriber. If you are already, thank you. That makes all the journalism we do here possible. If you're not, we really hope you'll consider joining us. Search Economist Podcasts for a free trial. Okay, Charlotte, we're going to start off with you. You went to eastern Pennsylvania. Tell us about the trip you took to the state's third biggest city.

Yes, I went to Allentown, which is an hour or so north of Philadelphia, about 2 hours west of New York. And it is in that blue belt of Democratic counties in the east of Pennsylvania. It's distinct from the Philadelphia suburbs, though. It has an industrial past. It's right next to Northampton County, which is a key swing county in this election. And I went to Allentown to speak to Christopher Borick, who is a professor of political science at Muhlenberg College, and he set out Pennsylvania's political geography for me.

When you think about Pennsylvania, you often think about it as multiple regions with very separate political identities. The southeast part of the state is the Philadelphia metropolitan area. One of the largest in the country. It has very prosperous, highly educated suburbs, and that part of the state has a large share of the electorate and one that has increasingly become Democratic over the last few election cycles and are now in many ways the engine of Democratic success in the state. You move out of the southeast corner of the state into the north and the western parts of the state, and it quickly becomes very rural. Pennsylvania also has one of the largest rural populations in the United States, and those rural areas are deeply conservative. There's some pockets of cities out— Pittsburgh out west, Harrisburg, Scranton, Erie— that are still fairly Democratic. But outside of Southeast Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania is a different political entity. It's often seen as more Midwestern in its identity, while the Southeast is truly Atlantic metropolitan in its nature.

So it was always clear that Pennsylvania was going to be a battleground, and then Joe Biden dropped out of the race and Harris entered the race. How did that switch affect the battle for the state?

So Harris becoming the nominee for the Democratic Party has transformed the race in Pennsylvania to a, a modest but important degree. If you looked at the race in late June and early July when President Biden was still the likely nominee, the race was slipping away from the Democrats, not to an enormous point, but about 3 or 4 points on average in the polls, which is in a place like Pennsylvania, pretty significant. Since Vice President Harris became the nominee, the race has closed in Pennsylvania. Most polls now show it as a dead heat if you look at the averages, which largely aligns with what happened here in 2020 when Biden won by a point. Trump won by half a point 4 years earlier. It's a state that's won and lost on the margins, and we seem to be in that same place again. What Harris has done to help solidify her position in the polls and make it as tight as we've seen is really improve upon Biden's numbers in key constituencies within the Democratic coalition. Younger voters, progressive voters. She's helped build the advantage among women to levels that mirror more what the 2020 numbers were than where Biden was, you know, in early summer.

One of the political tactics that's been deployed, right, is to have a strategy of trying to compete in certain counties where a given party knows that they'll lose, but they want to lose by a smaller margin. What do you make of that this time around in Pennsylvania, and where might that be most relevant?

I think it is the smart strategy. As I said, Pennsylvania is so tight in terms of the election, so little gains across counties that you lose, and sometimes lose significantly, but modestly improve upon can be quite impactful when we get to the final number. So both parties are taking on this approach. I'll give some tangible examples. Talking with a local radio station in the Lehigh Valley that's a conservative talk radio station, the news director told me, you know, Harris is running a lot of ads on our station and we're 95% Republican, 95% Trump. Well, why would you spend money on ads of a Democrat on a station like that? You're looking at the margin, that 5%. Maybe having some improvement there. Or Donald Trump, you know, in Philadelphia, putting ads on Black radio, you know, stations that are overwhelmingly Democratic-leaning. That's the type of campaign that we're seeing. You look under every stone. You try to find voters on the margin that can add up in a race that everybody knows is tight.

What are the big things that you're watching for now with just a few weeks to go, amazingly, until Election Day? What are the things you have your eye on?

Yeah, I'm interested in classic campaign structures and activities now. In Pennsylvania, you know, you see a lot of activity on the ground and door knockers are everywhere. You walk out in the street on a weekend, you'll see people going back and forth where I live trying to get out the vote and encourage that. The strategies seem different though, the party strategies. Democrats, I think, are much more engaged in this outreach activity in the state, mobilizing voters, making contact with voters. It's not that Republicans aren't doing that at all, at all, but to a far lesser degree, and especially with the Trump campaign, which seems to have taken— they say they have offices in the state, they say they're active in this, but there's not as much empirical proof of that. I think they're ultimately resting on their candidate's appeal. And so it's a little bit of a test of those approaches and those strategies that's playing out here. You notice it, you see it in the activity that's going on.

Is that because the Trump campaign is just doubling down on certain areas of the state where They know they already have an advantage and it's a turnout bet?

I'm not positive. They're certainly airing ads, they're certainly spending a lot of money. The former president is in the state, it seems, on a daily basis. Every few days he's back here. But the structural aspects, the kind of organizational things that you would associate with a really major campaign in a major state, don't seem to be as present as one might envision. I think it's a strategic choice. I don't know if it emanates from the top, but it seems pretty visible to me as someone that's observing the campaigns on the ground.

Charlotte, there are 6 swing states that will determine the 2024 election, or 7 if you include North Carolina. Why have we decided to go big on Pennsylvania?

Well, it's a swing state where the campaigns are really running neck and neck, and it's a swing state that has the most electoral votes, 19 to Georgia and North Carolina's 16, which are the next biggest states. So Trump, if he can flip Pennsylvania, which voted for Biden last time, if he can flip Pennsylvania and one other big state like a Georgia, he could win. And either candidate could win the presidency without winning Pennsylvania, but it's really hard to do that. So it's no surprise that it's attracting a huge amount of cash and lots of visits from late September through Election Day. Groups supporting the campaigns have reserved more than $138 million in airtime in Pennsylvania. That's more than 50% more cash than in the next closest state for big campaign spending, which is Michigan. So it's attracting a huge amount of attention. And so when you see where campaigns are spending their time or the, the areas of interest, if you think about the entire state running east to west, you have Philadelphia, which is historically, of course, a Democratic stronghold, the suburbs around Philadelphia, which have much more blue. Then you have the Lehigh Valley where I was, where you have Allentown, which is an increasingly Hispanic city, but the Lehigh Valley has an old industrial past. You have Northampton County just north of Allentown, which was home to Bethlehem Steel, is a real swing county. And then you have lots of rural areas. You go further west, you get to Pittsburgh, which is the second-biggest city in Pennsylvania, a Democratic stronghold, but with Republican-leaning suburbs. And then up to Erie in the Northwest where you were, Idris, right?

Yes, I went to Erie, which is a very beautiful corner of Pennsylvania, right on the Great Lake. And there too, you hear very similar points being made about where Harris is. She has some offices there and where Trump isn't. So he's still relying on a lot of in-person visits. He visited Erie last weekend. He's going back to Butler, Pennsylvania. This weekend, which is of course where he nearly lost his life. So I think that'll be quite a rally to see. It makes sense that a lot of Trump in particular and Harris are both spending time in Pennsylvania. For our model, I think there's about a 3 in 10 chance that it's the tipping point state that decides who the next president is going to be. So that's why they're spending so much time there. In Trump's case, if he wins Pennsylvania, Georgia, and North Carolina, he would have 270, so that would be a pathway for him to win. That probably is the most natural pathway. For Harris, if she wins Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, and keeps Nebraska too, I think she also gets a 270. So both of them, you know, have a very reliable path that goes through Pennsylvania, which is why they're spending as much time there as they are.

And the reason Pennsylvania is a swing state, of course, is not that it's perfectly representative of the country as a whole. It's because it's a few clicks to the right of America. America. And you see that reflected in the demography. It's a bit older than the country as a whole. So 20% of the population of Pennsylvania is 65 years or older versus 17.7%, so 18% of America as a whole. And it's a smidgen poorer than the country as a whole. So the median household income in Pennsylvania is about $74,000 versus $78,000 in the rest of the country. It's a bit whiter than America as a whole. And all these things help to put Pennsylvania a couple of percentage points to the right politically, to the right of the nation politically. And that's why it's such a bellwether. I mean, were the Electoral College perfectly representative of the country as a whole, then the fact that Harris is clearly ahead in the popular vote would lead our model to make her a heavier favourite than she is. As it is, It's pretty much 50-50 in our model. Charlotte, what are the key issues in Pennsylvania, and do they differ from those in the country as a whole?

Yes and no, in that the economy is very much the top issue in Pennsylvania, and immigration, which is another big issue nationally, is slightly less important in Pennsylvania. But it really is the economy where each campaign needs to try to win over voters. And Northampton, which I mentioned earlier and which we've covered in The Economist itself. It's really a bellwether county near Allentown. It's in the Lehigh Valley. It went for Obama twice, then for Trump, then back to Biden. And I thought it was kind of an interesting window into the challenge for Democrats on messaging here. So Northampton has a history as a manufacturing center. Bethlehem is in the bottom of this pretty valley. I don't know if you— either of you drove past it on your trips, but you look down into Bethlehem and you see the old smokestacks of Bethlehem Steel rising up. Which feels like the visual equivalent of a church spire in an English village. And manufacturing continues to be treated with this kind of religious reverence. And if you look at the state more broadly, the idea that you would let U.S. Steel, which is headquartered in Pittsburgh where Idris was, be sold to Nippon, a Japanese company, continues to be treated with a kind of blasphemy. Biden opposes that sale of U.S. Steel to Nippon. But in Bethlehem itself, it's not the case anymore that it's some kind of desolate place place that never recovered from post-industrial woes. Pittsburgh, similarly, you know, has a huge economy based on its educational and healthcare institutions. And in, and in Northampton, the region has had other growth, not to the same extent as Pittsburgh, but certainly in healthcare and education, also in logistics. So it's not like it's an overly depressed place, but it still is a place that is in transition, right? And like many other regions, it's keen to see additional investment. Its voters want to see inflation subside. It has been the beneficiary of some Biden policies to help for clean energy infrastructure, but it's kind of hard to make that messaging land, A, when those projects haven't been built yet, and B, when inflation continues to, to be the real economic force that voters feel on a daily basis. So the Biden policies feel more theoretical and the inflation that you see at the grocery store, at the pump, feels very real. And I was talking to one Democratic official who was talking a little bit about the challenge of putting the economic message into soundbites for the Democrats. And it's just hard to do really well. You know, you hear Democrats talking about greedflation as the reason why inflation is high, trying to blame companies for this. I don't know that that really lands. I think Trump has an easier job in just saying it's Biden's fault.

Okay, next we'll go to a more rural part of the Commonwealth, and I'll tell you guys about my trip to Trump country. But before we do that, Charlotte and Idris, what have you particularly enjoyed from The Economist's recent coverage? Perhaps enjoyed isn't the right word given how much turbulence there is in the world at the moment, but in any case, what would you recommend to our readers and listeners?

The COVID of The Economist this week is on the year that shattered the Middle East and includes all kinds of coverage from our colleagues covering both both the current escalating conflict and explaining how the region more broadly has changed over the past year. It's excellent.

I liked our long piece about the new Japanese Prime Minister, Kishida, who's going to be taking over pretty soon, who's going to have to deal with a new American president. He's a little bit more of a defense hawk. It was a good introduction to him and the issues that he'll be facing soon.

Next up, I took a trip to the far northeast of Pennsylvania. The 8th Congressional District borders the states of New York and New Jersey, and I went there to find out how the Republican Party is approaching this election. I'm at the cross street of Adams and Biden Street in downtown Scranton, Pennsylvania, having driven on the President Joe Biden Highway to get here. This is an area that is closely associated with the sitting president, but it's in Pennsylvania's 8th Congressional District. Pennsylvania 8th is a classic Obama-to-Trump district. So in 2012, Barack Obama won the seat with Joe Biden as vice president, won this district by 12 points, more or less. And then in 2016, there was a huge swing towards Donald Trump. He won it by 9.6. In 2020, Donald Trump won again, but the margin was much closer, 2.9 points. So if Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are to win Pennsylvania, they need to get closer to Joe Biden's result in 2020 than to Hillary Clinton's result in 2016. This is an area that used to be an industrial area. It is whiter than America on average. It is slightly less educated. And there's a bit of a sense that it's an area that's been in decline economically. And so for all of those reasons, it is Trumpy. Donald Trump is going to win here on November 5th. The question is, how big will the margin be? Pennsylvania 8 is unusual because despite having been won by Donald Trump, it's still represented by a Democrat in the House of Representatives.

This race is going to be close. They're going to put a lot of money out there.

So Republicans are aggressively targeting this seat. At a campaign event, Lou Barletta, a former congressman with teeth so white they have their own parody account on X, warmed up the crowd. When he was in office, he had made immigration his signature issue. And now he had a sense of vindication.

Back then, I was the canary in the mines, telling everybody what was going to happen. And look at what's happened. The Democrats want that. They want open borders. They want people to come into the country illegally and take American citizens' jobs. They don't care.

Immigration is still relatively low in this bit of Pennsylvania. The population is up ever so slightly since the pandemic, but that came after decades of decline. But still, talking about immigration works. One other attack line cut through to the crowd.

They're okay with boys competing against girls in sports. They don't care that if a boy feels like he's a girl today, he can walk into a girl's bathroom. That is not who we are here.

The Republican now running for the seat is a 34-year-old political newcomer, Rob Bresnahan. He's the local son who inherited his family's construction business. In all his messaging, he emphasizes his political moderation.

Because I'm not a threat to Pennsylvania women. I'm not going to cut Social Security. I wasn't handed anything. And I was born here. I was raised here. I reinvested here. I created jobs here.

In his ads and pamphlets, Bresnahan is keen to mention those are union jobs he created.

I'm running against the guy who votes with Joe Biden nearly 100% of the time. AOC, 95% of the time. You can't say that you represent northeastern Pennsylvania with a voting record like this. Two days ago, he voted against the gas-powered vehicle tax. He wants to tell us that we have to drive electric vehicles. Which, hey, listen, if you want an electric vehicle, I'm all for it.

Drive it.

But I don't want to be told that that's what I have to do.

What Bresnahan didn't mention, even in this room of Republican faithful who chose to come to an event on a drizzly Wednesday night, was Donald Trump. There were a few digs at Kamala Harris, but otherwise the presidential race was absent. That's not to say Trump doesn't have a base of support here. I also spoke with TJ Fitzgerald, who runs a grassroots Republican organization in Luzerne, one of the counties that PA-8 includes. He says he's not sure he ever even voted before 2016.

Finally, we have a business person that's going to run the country like a business. And both sides hate him, the elitists from the Republican Party and the Democrat Party. Everybody with power, everybody that has millions hated him. Kind of like Jesus. Kind of funny, isn't it? Kind of like everybody else. Like Mandela. Like Rosa Parks. Like every other person that wants to change. Like Lincoln.

Fitzgerald is obviously passionate. You can hear him hitting the table as he talks. His organization is doing the kind of small-ball work— organizing, door-knocking, and registering voters— that can add up in close races. But his story also says something about how, despite all the polarization in America, everyone has individual reasons for holding the political views they do.

That's how I got involved with politics, is that I realized that people don't have a voice. And the people in government, whether it's Democrat or Republican, they really don't— they pass over the common person. And they hurt people. I'm fighting for them. That's what got me involved.

He's also organising poll watchers because he's concerned about the integrity of the vote. He's testified to Congress about Republican claims that there were issues with the vote in Pennsylvania in 2020. For him, the stakes seem existential.

And right now, if we don't win, I believe we're going to have a fascist state, like Hillary said. She wants to put us in jail. She said that there's a big move in the Democrat Party to take our First Amendment right. And then if they own everything, if they win, they have the CIA, the FBI, they have everything. They have said that they want to put us in camps. Videos showed it. And I'm afraid. So because I want to have a free country, I want to tell people that this vote matters, and to keep freedom, we need to win.

Lots of Trump supporters are genuinely scared about what happens if their man loses. And if he does lose, for TJ Fitzgerald, it will be because those elites found a way to pass over, and to hurt, the common person once again. Idris, talking to TJ Fitzgerald for me was a reminder that there are things that are axiomatically true on the right, like that Hillary Clinton wants to put Trump supporters in camps, or that people in Springfield are eating pets, that people on the left or who pay attention to mainstream media in America are just completely unaware of. So do you know what that's a reference to?

Yeah, about 2 weeks ago, Hillary Clinton went on MSNBC and gave an interview, and she had a comment on misinformation that a lot of people in the conservative news environment really were outraged by. And I think that's what you're hearing, although the call for camps, I think, is new, at least to me. What she said in that interview was that the Russians had interfered in the election in 2016. And then this is her full quote. She said, quote, I also think there are Americans who are engaged in this kind of propaganda and whether they should be civilly or even in some cases criminally charged is something that would be a better deterrence because the Russians are unlikely, except in a very few cases, to ever stand trial in the United States. So that is what got lots of people irate, and that is filtered down, as you can see, to people who are actively campaigning in Pennsylvania.

One thing that I think I struggle with a bit is that every coalition, every political party has people within it who say things that sound strange and not entirely connected to reality. And so trying to decipher what is the fringe person talking about a given issue and how closely that person's views are aligned with the policies of whoever it is they support So whether it's Trump himself or JD Vance or someone running for Congress, I think that that's an important exercise to do in exploring the political landscape of a given place. So John, how do you think about that in this context?

Well, the thing that really struck me on that is the distance between what the guy running for Congress in a competitive district is saying in his messaging, and when you go and talk to Trump activists how they view things. So Rob Bresnahan is running in a competitive district. His messaging is much more moderate. He presents himself as a moderate. You heard there in that little clip at the event we went to, he was saying, I'm all for electric cars. People can drive them if they want to. That's great. But what I don't want is the government telling me that I must drive one. That's quite a clever position because it both keeps Republicans in the base happy, but it also says, hey, I get that climate change is a thing and maybe electric cars are good. Most obviously, he didn't mention Trump at all, which is pretty striking. But then if you go and talk to local Republican activists, and as you say, they're not always a completely representative tribe, though T.J. Fitzgerald, it's worth double underlining, did testify to Congress about Republican allegations of election fraud in Pennsylvania back in 2020. But among them, the level of threat they feel from Democrats is just incredibly high. And they love Donald Trump. And then I guess the last thing I'd say on that is whenever you talk to voters or political activists, the reasons why they hold their views are pretty complicated and don't fit in necessarily to the neat stories we tell ourselves about polarization. So there's one guy I talked to who's a Trump activist who was really cross because, I'm just gonna try and get this right, a bit of forest near where he lives has been cleared in order to put solar panels up, he said. So that's bad enough. It's the federal government deforesting his neighborhood in order to put solar panels up. But more than that, these solar panels had displaced some local bears. So he was now worried that he and his neighbors were gonna get eaten by the bears. So, you know, not only is Kamala Harris a threat to democracy, but her environmental policy is a direct threat to the lives of him and his neighbors.

Sorry, I guess the phenomenon that you just explained in my mind points to, I think, some of the strangeness of this election, right? Because I think someone who's going to blame Kamala Harris for bears marauding through the streets, I mean, that person is going to blame Kamala Harris for anything, I think, right? And for political candidates, probably on both sides of this race, right, the challenge is not alienating the real diehards and encouraging them to turn out and not alienating the swing voters, of which there are some who will make a difference in Pennsylvania. I am struck by how the broader issues of election integrity, which Idris covered so well in a recent cover story, are playing out in Pennsylvania. These are very active issues in the courts too.

They are. And that was another thing I was keen to understand when I was there, how Republican voters, how Republican activists think about the fairness of the election system in Pennsylvania. My impression was the views of the people I was talking to were a bit shaped by the fact that they were talking to an outsider with a funny accent. And when I asked about whether the result in 2020 would be trustworthy, whether they'd accept it if Kamala Harris won, most didn't want to say outright, no, we wouldn't, that 2020 was stolen. You know, they didn't sound full-on stop the steal in a Rudy Giuliani-ish manner. What they do do is just raise questions and doubts. And I think the truth is the system for electing presidents in America and in Pennsylvania, it's pretty complicated. You know, each county has different rules. The way American states run their registers of voters is a bit complicated compared with other countries. So it does seem like, as Idris wrote in his excellent cover story, this is a question of a complicated system that's hard to understand. Meeting a group of people who are primed to not trust it. And that's a pretty bad recipe.

Well, I think if Trump wins, all of these doubts will be gone. So, you know, that's why there's some hedging. It'll only take place if Harris wins. And unfortunately, I think that there are rules in Pennsylvania that are actual breeding grounds for misinformation and doubt. You know, Pennsylvania doesn't allow mail-in ballots to be pre-counted, so that creates this perception that on Election Day, because Republicans are more likely to turn out, that, you know, the count starts red and it gets progressively bluer, that that's a big conspiracy kind of breeding ground.

Yeah, I think that's right. I did talk to an election administrator in one of the counties in PA-8, and she seemed very confident that the election would go smoothly. She thought that they were well prepared, that the count would happen promptly, She was spending a lot of time trying to communicate this to Republican voters in particular, and I think having a difficult time with that. Alright, we'll be back in a moment to hear about Idris's tour of beautiful western Pennsylvania. Idris, to finish up our trifecta of Pennsylvania road trips, You've been to its western edges.

Yeah, that's right. I went back to Pittsburgh where I spent a fond summer when I was in college, and now I'm back reporting. So that was fun. One of the first stops was with a Harris campaigner named Bree Erskine. She very politely let me shadow her as she canvassed in the borough of Bellevue, which is in the western part of Pennsylvania. And we talked on a busy road on a rainy day.

So Bellevue is a pretty working-class It's a working-class neighborhood right outside of the main area of Pittsburgh. I'm literally one bridge outside of the city, technically. But it's definitely a place that has seen a kind of an increase in people wanting to live here.

And so it seems like a lot of the people here are voting for Harris.

Yeah.

Or say that they will.

And I guess your job is to make sure that they actually turn out and vote?

You can't take for granted that people are going to be able to get out on Election Day, right? Or if they're going to be able to get off work, if they're going to be able to make it before they drop the kids off at school. So checking in with folks, giving them that nudge, that reminder to make a plan can be really helpful.

And what's your sense of why people here are voting for Harris?

That's a good question. I think she is representative of them. I think coming from a middle-class family, um, being able to go to law school, right? I think that's the American dream, right? Her parents are immigrants. Can work hard and get an opportunity.

That's—

I don't think people have given up on that dream, and I think they can see themselves in her in that. I also think You know, there's simple math, right? Her plans make sense. I think when they see somebody like Kamala, they see somebody who means what they say. But I think specifically here, people— I think it goes back to opportunity. People want to— I don't think anybody wants their children to have less opportunity than what they had.

Democrat Chris D'Iluzio represents Pennsylvania's 17th district. Congressional District that takes in Pittsburgh suburbs. Some of them are wealthier, some of them working class. Joe Biden won that district in 2020, but it's a much tougher place for Democrats to win than the center of the city. When we met in an office in a union hall after D'Alusio had just delivered remarks before retired educators, he told me what he was hearing from voters.

Costs are on folks' minds. I think they're mad about corporate price gouging. And the way that some of these executives brag about it. People want our democracy to be functional and normal and healthy and not something they have to worry about. No one wants to think about a candidate like Donald Trump trying to overthrow the Constitution and doing what he did on January 6th. They don't want to have abortion rights ripped away. Most people, the overwhelming majority of my constituents, don't think this is something the government ought to be interfering in. And I think people just want to have secure, prosperous, normal lives without wacky extreme stuff like you hear out of Trump and a lot of the right-wing Republicans these days. I think they just want a normal, healthy, strong democracy and a government that serves them well.

There's this growing diploma divide in America where college-educated voters are increasingly gravitating towards the Democratic Party, and those without advanced degrees are increasingly gravitating towards the Republican Party. It's kind of reversing the polarity that existed for a while. You can't win a district like yours with just college-educated voters, right? How do you kind of fight against that current, if you will, that affects districts like yours? And, you know, what—

how do you deal with it?

Democrats like me have been doing better with the exact kind of voters you're asking about. Than, say, 2016. And I think that is a result and a reflection of a commitment to standing up for workers, for labor rights. It mattered in 2020 that Joe Biden campaigned the way he did and what he said about standing up for workers' rights and now has been the most pro-union president of my lifetime. You know, I represent a region that very proudly made and still makes steel. Built this country, and we suffered through terrible trade deals that really hurt places like Western Pennsylvania, pushed by Wall Street and a corporate management ideology that just chased the cheapest and weakest labor and environmental rules. That kind of policy decision-making, I think, was misguided, was a mistake. And what we've seen Democrats like me who recognize that who understand fundamentally we have to do something different.

If you look at the electoral map of Western Pennsylvania, you will see a sea of red with two exceptions: Allegheny County, which includes Pittsburgh and a large chunk of the 17th Congressional District, but also Erie, tucked in the northwest corner of the state. Erie is also one of only two counties, aside from Northampton County in the east, that voted for Donald Trump in 2016 and then switched to Joe Biden in 2020. Trump held a rally in Erie last weekend, and it's a perfect bellwether for the state. I talked to Jeff Bloodworth, who's a professor of American political history at Gannon University in the city of Erie, which sits very picturesquely on the shores of the Great Lake. We met in a busy Turkish bakery not far from campus, where he told me why the area is so predictive of the rest of the state.

It's whiter, it's less educated, and it's economically more downscaled than the average Pennsylvanian.

Okay.

At the same time, 20% of people in the city of Erie are either African American or recent immigrants. The city of Erie is a Democratic stronghold. And then you throw on the suburbs, right? I mean, these are these college-educated Republicans who don't vote for Trump. Throw onto that, there's a lot of rural whites who are conservative. And so it's kind of this perfect bellwether, right? I mean, it's a demographic microcosm of the state. If a Democrat can do well here, then they can do well enough in the rest of the state.

Yeah.

And what are you seeing in terms of whether or not Democrats actually show up here? Do you see Harris's folks out here doing things, or what do you see?

Yeah. So another piece of this is just Erie County Democratic Party itself, in that what it hasn't done is followed a national trend of being hijacked, I would argue, by and for the professional middle class. I mean, that is what the national party is. I mean, looking back, like, the Harris-Shapiro ticket would have been the perfect distillation of what the modern Democratic Party has become. Coastal, Lawyers.

Yeah.

So, so the Erie County Democratic Party, what they do is they have a bunch of normie Democrats and they're going door to door and they're able to fight off the national brand, you know, like, okay, well, Kamala Harris might believe X, but, you know, that's not Kyle Faust, who's the county comptroller. So Harris is here, right? I mean, they have 8 paid staffers in the Erie County Democratic Party itself. You know, like they're investing, there are boots on the ground.

When you talk to folks here, maybe in your classes or just out and about, what are the kinds of things that they kind of express most interest in issue-wise? Is it economy, inflation, basically above all?

There are people who might have been open to voting for a Democrat. Democrat, you know, and they're like, look, things were better under Trump. And again, if you're lower middle class and working class, it's, you know, your dollar does not go as far. So I think inflation, for a certain kind of Erieite, right, because this is a very cost-conscious market, right? This is not a wealthy place, you know, as compared to Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. So inflation really matters, especially for a kind white ethnic Democrat who was like, maybe they voted Trump in '16 and maybe they're like, I like Joe Biden in '20. I could see that mattering. But you know what I've heard again and again? I mean, it really isn't about the issues. It's really about Donald Trump. Does he repel you or does he attract you?

So Idris, just to underline how different Erie is to the bits of Pennsylvania that Charlotte and I were with, it's really, really swing territory. I mean, as you said, only 2 counties went from Donald Trump to Joe Biden in 2022 out of Pennsylvania's 67 counties, and Erie is one of them. It's a proper bellwether.

Yes, that's right, for all the reasons that he pointed out. It's also the largest county in Pennsylvania, so it just does expand and include, you know, it has a mini city, it has many suburbs, it has rural areas outside of it. So it's a good barometer for the rest of the state. And that's why you've seen Donald Trump spend as much time there as he has. I thought Jeff was really, really good. And one of the things he said at the end about whether or not Trump repels you or attracts you, I think is a good framework. But the other thing that occurred to me as you go around the state is people are very concerned about economics and inflation, but it's also, I think, a kind of deeper cultural attachment. And it's interesting, you see that reflected in the slogans of both candidates. So Trump is keeping "Make America Great Again," and Harris is supposed to be "We're not going back." And I think it's— why does education become the dividing line that it has? I think it's that for a lot of people, the past looks rosier than the present, and For others, you know, generally people with college degrees, the future seems better than the past and people want restoration in the Trump case. And in the Democratic case, people want, you know, what they think of as progress. And that to me seems like the big dividing line. I mean, people will haggle over inflation and whatnot, but that seems to me to be not kind of the core issue that we're talking about. It actually, Jon, in your interviews when people are saying, you know, there's too much illegal immigration, there's transgender ideology in schools. I mean, that seems to me to be what people are really kind of arguing about, or at least the partisans. Of course, you know, it probably won't be up to the partisans, but that was what was interesting to me from going around the state.

I think a challenge for any campaign is how to marry immediate concerns— in this case, I think inflation— within a broader narrative that is tied— I think you're right, Adris— to questions of perception of whether the past and prior period of someone's life looks rosier than what they expect the future to be. I'm struck by, in both campaigns though, how much of the economic messaging does feel pretty retro, right? I mean, we're talking about a sense of restoring a certain type of economy in both parties. We're talking about promoting union jobs, in the case of the Democrats, Trump talks about trying to restore a kind of economic prosperity that has been lost in the Biden years. So in both cases, there is a bit of a retroeconomic messaging that is happening within a quite new economic framework of protectionism and government intervention.

Yeah, that's right. And Harris gave a speech in Pittsburgh where she laid out her new economic policy, which, like you said, has an emphasis on unions. I find the Democratic embrace of unions a kind of last grasp almost. Democrats are undergoing this big transition where they are becoming the party of the college-educated, the managerial class, and they're transitioning out of being a working-class party. And that's a problem for them because there just aren't as many college-educated Americans as there are non-college-educated Americans. And you see already the Teamsters not endorsing Harris because their members are blue-collar without degrees, and they're drifting pretty substantially towards Donald Trump. Democrats are promising lots of really good economic incentives for working-class Americans, and yet they seem to be losing their grip on them. And that's why I think they're trying and they're fighting as hard as they are to try to keep them. And I think it makes sense, right? You don't want to do what Hillary Clinton did and totally consign whole swaths of the country off to the other side. You need to cut into your margins, and you need to come up with policies that try to appeal, even if you're not gonna be all that successful, because, you know, in a state like Pennsylvania, every vote in every place will count.

Yeah, I guess that transition is probably most striking in places like Lackawanna County, which contains Scranton, where Joe Biden was born, and Biden helped win back that white Catholic vote that Hillary lost, right, in 2016. And that's That's a big question mark, I think, for the Harris campaign, whether Harris can do as well with those voters who I think represent that older base that sounds like you're arguing Democrats may permanently lose. I'm particularly interested not just in that cohort of voters, but also, as we've discussed before on the pod, the way that Trump is eating into Democrats' historic dominance among racial minorities. And in a state like Pennsylvania, There are nearly 600,000 Latinos who are eligible to vote in this election. And you see the Harris campaign acknowledging that there aren't just Latino issues, right? That the issues that all Pennsylvanians care about are the issues that Latinos care about as well. And yet the Trump campaign is eating into what had historically been a quite strong Democratic base for the reasons that you just described, Idris, with a message that resonates with many working-class voters. So that's another area of vulnerability for Dems and potential gain for the Republicans.

Like both of you, I'm very struck by the retro nature of the economic messaging in this campaign. I think it's partly explained by the fact that 3 of the key states are part of the Rust Belt. The fact that Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania are so key, I think, explains a lot of the rhetoric. Idris, something we haven't talked about yet on the podcast is African American voters in Pennsylvania. There are lots, particularly in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, and they're gonna be important as well. So what, if anything, did you glean from your trip about that demographic?

Yes, disproportionately in Philadelphia. But one thing that was of interest that came up in a few conversations is the fact that Democratic turnout in Philadelphia itself has not been as high as some would like. And the success overall in the Philadelphia suburbs has masked the fact that the Democratic machine within Philadelphia has perhaps not been doing all it needs to do. To get the top candidates over the line, which I thought is interesting. And particularly, people are worried about support among African Americans in the city and turnout, Hispanic Americans in the city, and also working-class whites in the northwest part of the city, which is all very interesting. People sort of think of Philadelphia as ironclad for Democrats, but maybe there is some weakness there too.

Well, I expect some of us will be in Pennsylvania for election week itself, so hopefully it won't take too long for the state to count its votes, and then we'll know what's actually happened. Okay, it's quiz time. This one is about the Electoral College. Pennsylvania has 19 Electoral College votes, as we discussed earlier. And there's one other state that has the same number. Which is it?

Hmm.

I'm going to deflect. So while I was driving around Pennsylvania, I thought of the geekiest possible dad joke.

Amazing.

So lots of politicians are making trips to Pennsylvania. Which character from The Iliad does Pennsylvania resemble and why?

I'm gonna deflect and say that by making dad jokes, you're doing cultural appropriation, and I apologize to our listeners.

Okay, I'll tell you. Helen of Troy, because it's the state that launched a thousand trips.

Love that. That is really good. I enjoyed that very much.

Idris, I just wanted to tell you, for our listeners, how pained Idris looks. Do you see what I did there? I exchanged one form of geekery for another form of geekery, and now we can just go straight to thank-yous.

That's really good. Yeah. Idris, do you want to guess what the answer to the question is? Or should we just ignore the question entirely and go to question 2?

I'm gonna guess Illinois.

Is the right answer. Charlotte, your deflection was masterful, but ultimately failed.

It actually gave me a lot of time to think. I was like, New York, no. Texas, no. Question 2.

Ugh.

6 dates.

As well as DC, have just 3 Electoral College votes. How many of them can you name?

Oh, North Dakota, South Dakota, Alaska, Wyoming, and Delaware.

Oh, well done, Idris. Yeah, those.

And, oh, oh, um... Vermont?

Is the right answer. I think you get so many points for that. Charlotte, you're running a little behind, but we'll go for question 3 anyway. Can you name the top 4 states with the most Electoral College votes? In order.

California.

California. New York, Texas. New York. No, California, Texas, New York, Florida.

That's it. So close. California, Texas, Florida, New York. New York's had a couple taken away since 2020.

Everyone's leaving, I've been told.

Okay, that's it for this week. Thank you, Charlotte. Thank you, Idris.

Thank you.

Thank you.

This episode was produced by Harriet Noble, Stevie Hirt, and Marguerite Howell. Saul Rivers is our sound engineer. If you like the podcast, then please do let people know and leave us a rating and a review. That means lots more people can find Checks and Balances wherever they get their podcasts. And you can get in touch with us via email if you'd like to do that. The address is podcasts@economist.com. Thanks to one of our Pennsylvania listeners, Steve, who emailed in from suburban Philadelphia. We hope you've enjoyed this episode and our Our listener Jeremy emailed in to ask us to discuss the implications of the election for trade policy. Well, we're going to be doing a bit of that in next week's episode. Our journalists have been busy looking at what the election will mean for different policy areas, from trade to the environment to China, and we'll be delving into some of that next time. This has been the last episode of Checks and Balance we've made available to everyone. So from next week, you'll need to be a subscriber to listen. Search Economist Podcasts to get a free trial. To all of our podcasts. In the meantime, thanks very much for listening. We'll have more Checks and Balance next week.