As Goes Pennsylvania, So Goes the Senate

My latest at The Liberal Patriot ponders the Democrats' challenge this year in Pennsylvania. A close look at the data does not inspire optimism.

"If the Democrats don’t take the Republican-held Senate seat in Pennsylvania this November, their chances of keeping control of the Senate take a big and perhaps fatal hit. That’s because they need to take at least one seat from the Republicans to compensate for losing any one of three Democratic-held toss-up seats (Arizona, Georgia and Nevada). Pennsylvania is probably their best bet for doing so. Failing that, they are extremely vulnerable to the most dreaded outcome: losing control of both the House and the Senate.

But to take that Pennsylvania seat, they need to solve their Pennsylvania problem—their weakness among working class voters. In the teeth of what President Biden’s pollster John Anzalone has termed “the worst political environment” of his lifetime, the Democrats have to somehow hold together the Biden coalition of voters that managed—just barely, by a single percentage point—to take back the state from the GOP in 2020. That coalition’s success depended critically on Biden’s improved performance among Pennsylvania’s vast population of white working class (noncollege) voters, which must be considered unstable given the political history of the state.

That’s the old part of the Democrats’ working class problem in the state. The new part is their deteriorating support among nonwhite working class voters. Both can be illustrated by a brief review of 2020 election results in the state."

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The Democrats’ Pennsylvania Problem

Something Old, Something New