Pennsylvania’s Primary ‘Protest’ Votes Could Prove Decisive as a Close Presidential Election Looms in November

SOMERSET, Pennsylvania — Just about 236 miles from here lies Montgomery County, where reporters and analysts are beside themselves over-scrutinizing what the message is from all those Republican primary votes that went to Governor Haley over former President Trump, the party’s presumptive nominee — and what that means for November.The interest is understandable. Pennsylvania is a vitally important state for Mr. Trump and President Biden. Mr. Biden arguably needs it even more than Mr. Trump does.So why is the press asking only about Mr. Trump’s semi-weak performance?When looking for trends, it makes sense to ask what these suburban Republican voters are telling Mr. Trump with their protest vote for Ms. Haley. Will they continue their rejection of him into November, or are they just irritated but will come home to the party then?On Tuesday, Ms. Haley earned more than 12,000 votes to Mr. Trump’s 38,000 at Montgomery County. Overall, in Pennsylvania, the former South Carolina governor netted just more than 16.6 percent to Mr. Trump’s 83.4 percent.However, while reporters and strategists should wonder what it means to Mr. Trump, they should also ponder what happened in the Democratic primary results, not just in counties like this one but all over the state.That is, if you really do want to understand what might happen in this state in a few months.Ignoring what happened to Mr. Biden in Pennsylvania is no different than ignoring Secretary of State Clinton’s missteps here in 2016 and then wondering how Ms. Clinton lost.In short, while the highly populated, highly educated suburban counties like Philadelphia matter, it is more than likely that blue-collar counties such as Somerset, Erie, and Northampton will matter at least equally. They sure did in 2016, and they are giving reporters and strategists a wealth of information to dissect.Congressman Dean Phillips — who, despite being in the first handful of primaries challenging Mr. Biden before dropping out months ago, never really became a household name — earned an impressive 7 percentage points, or nearly 70,000 votes as of Wednesday morning, against Mr. Biden in Pennsylvania.Just for perspective, Mr. Biden defeated Mr. Trump by a little more than that number in 2020.Yet that is not all. The elusive write-in vote in the Democratic Party — which, according to the Pennsylvania Department of State, won’t be tallied for weeks — was pretty significant.First, the big counties. At Philadelphia, 15,921 Democrats chose to write in a candidate rather than vote for the sitting president. There were 13,000 Democrats who did that at Allegheny County and just less than 3,500 at Montgomery County.For perspective, four years ago, only 2,000 Democrats at Philadelphia, 6,000 at Allegheny, and 1,800 at Montgomery County wrote in a candidate in the Pennsylvania presidential primary.In other words, it is not just Mr. Phillips whom Mr. Biden lost votes to. He lost votes to no one in particular.What deserves further examination are the percentages in rural, post-industrial counties where Mr. Phillips received double-digit support. I counted at least 24 of those counties, including here at Somerset, where Mr. Phillips earned 13 percent of the Democratic primary vote.That is just the beginning. At Greene County, Mr. Phillips won a whopping 20 percent of the Democratic primary vote; at Fulton County, 18 percent; Montour and Juniata counties, 14 percent; Elk and Cambria counties, 15 percent; and Armstrong and Cameron counties, 13 percent. The list goes on and on.And if you are of the belief that rural, lower-populated counties don’t matter in Pennsylvania, then you were not paying attention to what happened here in 2016, when turnout in counties such as Luzerne, Erie, Northampton, Cambria, Beaver, and Greene changed everything for Ms. Clinton, for the worse, on election night.The Phillips numbers in the rural counties don’t take into account the write-in numbers statewide, which, again, won’t be tabulated for weeks, but current estimates calculate that number is around 60,000. Nothing is official yet, but if you add up the Phillips protest vote and the write-in protest vote, it starts to look similar to the Ms. Haley numbers on the Republican side.There are two very important questions that should come out of the results of Pennsylvania’s primaries. Do wealthy suburban Republican voters on the Main Line come back out for Mr. Trump in November? As for Mr. Biden, can he convert Mr. Phillips’ voters to his side in the important rural counties, or will they even vote for president?Both matter in a state decided by just tens of thousands of votes.Creators.com

Pennsylvania’s Primary ‘Protest’ Votes Could Prove Decisive as a Close Presidential Election Looms in November

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