Trump rebuilds Democrats’ ‘blue wall’ states with red bricks
Harrisburg: Republicans landed historic victories in Pennsylvania this week, winning the battleground state’s valuable presidential electoral votes, posting a two-seat gain in its US House delegation and sweeping all four statewide offices on the ballot, including a US Senate seat.
The strong performance means Donald Trump has won Pennsylvania in two out of three tries, after Republicans had lost six straight presidential elections there.
Something similar happened in the other “blue wall” states of Michigan and Wisconsin, Rust Belt states where Trump prevailed again after losing in 2020. Still, Democrats held on in key Senate races in Wisconsin and Michigan, if just barely, and the results played out differently in each state.
Republican victories were most pronounced in Pennsylvania, a state flagged early on as this year’s preeminent swing state, where deep dissatisfaction surfaced with the status quo, more often than not to Republicans’ benefit.
Voters had the economy on their minds.
Voters were in a bad mood
About a third of voters nationwide, including in the blue wall states, said they felt their families were “falling behind” financially, according to AP VoteCast, a survey of more than 120,000 voters nationwide. That was an increase from 2020, when about 2 in 10 felt that way. In 2020, a majority of those financially strapped voters voted for President Joe Biden, but this year, about two-thirds supported Trump.
Berwood Yost, director of the Centre for Opinion Research at Franklin & Marshall College in Pennsylvania, said Democrats had a lot working against them among swing voters: their deteriorating personal finances, fuelled by inflation, and the sense that many blamed Biden.
Yost said Vice President Kamala Harris ran a strong campaign but was unable to overcome those headwinds.
“The mood of the electorate was so negative, they took it out on the incumbent party,” Yost said. Some voters’ memories of Trump’s presidency improved with the passage of time. VoteCast shows just 40 per cent of Pennsylvania voters said they approve of Biden’s job performance, while 54 per cent said they approved of Trump when he was president. Four years ago, Trump approval in Pennsylvania was 49 per cent.agencies
