Former — and now future — President Donald Trump pulled off a stunning victory Tuesday night, flipping battleground after battleground red as tens of millions of Americans voted to send him back to the White House.
Pennsylvania was his silver bullet.
“If we win Pennsylvania, we win the whole deal,” Trump told a local Pennsylvania radio station as votes rolled in on Tuesday.
The Keystone State was considered a must-win for Vice President Kamala Harris. Without it, Harris would have had to win both Michigan and Wisconsin as well as one southern swing state, North Carolina or Georgia, and a western swing state, Nevada or Arizona.
However, both North Carolina and Georgia began trending red early in the evening, boxing Harris into needing a Pennsylvania win. Before the night was over, it was clear she wouldn’t get one.
Trump made inroads in several key areas of Pennsylvania and swayed several crucial voter blocs, both of which locked in his win.
For decades, black and Latino voters swung hard for Democrats. But both groups have begun moving to Trump, driven largely by men. Democrats have been unable to stop the bleeding.
Harris underperformed with both groups in Pennsylvania’s major cities, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. She garnered 89% of the black vote in Pennsylvania, while Trump got 10%, exit polls show. This is down from Biden’s 92% support in 2020.
She performed abysmally with Latino voters in the state, winning just 57% to Trump’s 42%. In 2020, Biden did much better, winning 69% of Latino voters to Trump’s 27%.
In the final days of her campaign, Harris went to Philadelphia and pleaded with black and Latino voters to turn out for her. In the end, it didn’t work.
Harris also severely underperformed in several counties that were vital to her success.
Trump was able to flip Erie County in the northwestern corner of Pennsylvania, a bellwether that tends to predict the winner of the state. In 2020, President Joe Biden won the county by 1%, and in 2016, Trump won it by 2%. The president-elect appears to have won by a similar margin this time.
In Lackawanna County, President Joe Biden’s home turf, Harris appears to have won by three points, worse than Biden’s comfortable eight-point margin.
Even before Tuesday’s decisive defeat, there were rumblings within Harris’ camp that her Pennsylvania operation was coming up short. Democrats complained privately to the campaign that the Pennsylvania team was not cultivating relationships with key elected officials, among turnout issues and other problems.
Meanwhile, voters in the suburbs of the blue cities said life was just too expensive under Biden and Harris, and many of them voted for a Trump economy.
Trump’s assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania and his triumphant return to that area to rally supporters again may have galvanized voters in the vital swing state as well.
On Wednesday, one Philadelphia Democrat served up some cold realism.
“This is not just one county. This is not just one storyline. This is not just someone using this to explain their priors, right? This is pretty systematic,” said Representative Brendan Boyle.
“This is a solid Republican victory, and the largest Republican victory by a presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan in 1984″ in Pennsylvania, he said. “I don’t think any Democrat who wants to improve upon this situation should sugar coat this.”
