Behind the 2024 Election: Why did Harris Lose Pennsylvania? (Part 3)

Part 3- The Political Legacy (1985-now)

-“Steelworkers believe that their skills set themselves above anyone else in manufacturing and that they have the most demanding jobs in industrial America. Anyone who has the muscle can swing a pick & mine coal, they will tell you. Robots can assemble automobiles. But it takes uncommon talent, a strong body, and a mind that knows no fear to be able to transform piles of red dirt & scrap into the molten metal that is poured, rolled, and pounded into the various shapes that support the mainframes of civilization.” (Strohmeyer)

-“The working guy would elect me. He likes me.” (Trump to “Playboy”, 1990- in Alberta)

With its original three industrial economic pillars (coal, railroads, and steel) effectively gone by the mid-1980s, Pennsylvania has been on a journey of transformation ever since. The most striking outcome has been its loss of population (and in turn, loss of electoral muscle) which peaked way back in 1928 (with 38 votes). By the time John F. Kennedy, arguably the most popular Democrat since Franklin Roosevelt, drove through ecstatic crowds in the coal country of northeast Pennsylvania in 1960, Philadelphia’s population was peaking (at 2 million), but the electoral vote was down to 32. By 1984 and Reagan, at the end of the steel collapse, it was down to 25. Under popular Mayor Caligiuri (1977-1988) of Pittsburgh, the state’s second largest city shrank by 30%, with office parks replacing steel mills (much cleaner air!); now it is less than half of its former size (303,000 versus 676,000!).

Now the electoral vote is just 19. Philadelphia itself is now just 1.5 million (and is majority Black- 40% to white 37%), though its suburbs have grown dramatically. In the post-industrial era, Pennsylvanians are fewer; older (especially in more rural areas); and somewhat more diverse (with a rapidly growing Latino minority, especially in the east, in the former coal counties). Allentown, Reading, and Hazleton have become majority-Hispanic in the 2000s. Far more residents now have advanced education (counting associate’s degrees from community colleges, 44.3% of the state’s adults have a college degree or beyond; in comparison, just 11% of all American adults had finished college in 1970!). Outside the shrinking cities and growing suburbs, the broad rural areas (most of the 67 counties) are still mainly agricultural (dominated by dairy farming). As to where so many people went (from the ‘80s on)- I have no solid numbers, but what’s apparent is that many of the young left Pennsylvania for the new boom areas (the South and West- see my Sunbelt posts).

Three new “pillars” characterize the present state economy. In the southwest (the former bituminous coal area, next door to West Virginia), and in two counties in the far northeast (next to New York), there’s a new energy industry- fracking wells to produce natural gas (Pennsylvania has a large percentage of the oil-rich Marcellus Shale). The former coal counties of the Lehigh Valley in the northeast, bordering New Jersey and north of Philadelphia (the 3rd largest population center), have, thanks to diversifying away from heavy industry, such as Bethlehem Steel, early, become the “logistics hub” of the entire Northeast- the location of vast warehouses, such as for Amazon and Walmart, from which trucks carry merchandise to the big cities. But one industry dominates across the whole state now- health care- the biggest employer other than the local, state, and federal governments (20% of all jobs!). Biggest of all is UPMC- the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center- which runs most of the hospitals in the western part of the state. Fittingly, its logo is now atop the U.S. Steel Tower, the tallest building in Pittsburgh (much-diminished U.S. Steel is still there, but as a tenant!). Penn Medicine (part of the University of Pennsylvania, my alma mater) dominates the Philadelphia area; there’s Lehigh Valley Health in Allentown/Bethlehem, Conemaugh in Johnstown, etc.

Each of these industries has reshaped their respective areas in different ways. Fracking has brought in quite high-paying jobs to rural counties, and has cut utility bills; but the jobs have mostly been transient and held by workers from outside, and the drilling has produced noise and water pollution. The logistics boom has provided numerous unskilled jobs (a rarity anywhere these days!), but low-paying (the average annual wage for an Amazon warehouse job about $32,000), and fluctuating by season and economic trends. It’s also gobbled up prime farmland (Pennsylvania has some of the most fertile in the nation).

Map of Amazon warehouses in PA (now over 40- 25,000 workers), from zonhack.com

The health care economy is more complex; in broad terms it’s bifurcated. The vast majority of jobs are low-paying and largely held by women (nursing assistants, in-home care, etc.)- barred from benefits and advancement, as writers McElwee and Winant have shown, by employer tricks that classify them as “contract workers” rather than “employees”. Notably, these workers have nothing like the powerful union of the steel days that forced pay and benefit increases. Of course there’s also a top layer of well-educated and well-paying jobs (surgeons, physicians, etc.), mostly now part of giant corporations (rather than in private practice as in the recent past). As McElwee has shown, this population, rapidly expanding in the cities and suburbs, is increasingly young and liberal, and therefore voting Democratic.

To conclude- what does all of the above mean for the 2024 election??

In terms of recent political evolution, George H.W. Bush won the state by a much narrower margin than Reagan in 1988- and he was the last Republican to win it until 2016! Obama, who campaigned like Kennedy in the blue-collar towns, won it by the biggest margin since 1964 in 2008. Hence Pennsylvania was not a swing state in that long stretch- instead the focus was on Florida and Ohio. Trump campaigned widely in the state in 2016, whereas Hillary Clinton did not (her father was from Scranton). He won it by a very narrow margin (44,000), and of course also took the rest of the “Blue Wall” (Michigan and Wisconsin). Since, in terms of electoral heavyweights, Florida and Ohio have since joined Texas as reliably Republican, the electoral path for national Democratic candidates has gotten harder, and has put the focus on Pennsylvania (with its shrinking electoral vote). Hence the importance of Biden’s ties to the state in 2020 (born in Scranton) and his support by fellow Catholics (Latinos then voted for him 3:1). He won it back by over 80,000 (another major factor was large-scale turnout by people angry at Trump’s handling of the pandemic, which killed 41,000 in the state). The Democrats had their best election since Obama in the 2022 midterms (in the aftermath of the overturning of Roe). Physicians mobilized against celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz in the Senate race, helping to elect John Fetterman, the lieutenant governor and former mayor of Braddock (a typical poverty-stricken former steel town). In the governor’s race, Josh Shapiro, the attorney general, popular partly because of his release of a grand jury report on Catholic clergy sex abuse, won in a landslide over evangelical Doug Mastriano, a Trump ally who favored a total abortion ban. It was the first time since the 1840s that there were Democrats as both governor and both U.S. senators; the party even gained a one-vote control of the state house (the Republicans retain a slightly larger one in the senate). No wonder the party was confident about 2024- yet Trump won by 127,000!

Of course the chaos on the Democratic side, with the sudden and late shift from Biden to Harris as candidate, must have played a role. But, as countless voters told reporters and pollsters, it was the economy that dominated as an issue. Pennsylvanians saw the highest grocery price increases in the nation (8%) in 2023, on top of high interest rates, and scarce and expensive housing. Harris still got a good turnout in the affluent suburbs and college towns, but her support among Black voters in Philadelphia (battered also by high crime) fell markedly, and a large part of the Latino vote went to Trump (at least partially due to Harris’s strong support of abortion rights). As for the voters across most of the state: not only has there been no real economic recovery in many areas since the steel collapse of the 1980s, but there has since followed the Great Recession, the pandemic and the high inflation it caused for two years afterward, and the devastation of the opioid pandemic (which has hit the poor ex-industrial towns especially hard). It’s worth remembering that those steelworkers, who were in their 20’s when their world collapsed, are still around, in their 60’s now. There’s a lot of disillusion with politics overall (what with generations of perceived neglect of the working class), but Harris, an educated woman of color from distant California, was bound to have a big challenge (there’s the “masculinity” issue too, favoring Trump). It’s worth remembering, though, that Trump’s margin was still historically narrow, and that the Democrats, while they narrowly lost one Senate seat (Bob Casey, Jr.’s), still have a popular governor and real power at the state level. But a big lesson is that any future candidate will have to produce tangible and rapid economic help for the majority in the state who are struggling. That’s a tough challenge indeed!

RESOURCES:

Alberta, Tim. “American Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump.” (2019)

Bradlee, Ben, Jr. “The Forgotten: How the People of One Pennsylvania County Elected Donald Trump and Changed America.” (2018)

Dieterich-Ward, Allen. “Beyond Rust: Metropolitan Pittsburgh and the Fate of Industrial America.” (2016)

Freeman, Joshua B. “American Empire: The Rise of a Global Power, The Democratic Revolution at Home, 1945-2000.” (2012)

Jenkins, Philip. “The Postindustrial Age: 1950-2000.” in “Pennsylvania: A History of the Commonwealth” (Randall Miller and William Pencak, eds., 2002)

Kenward, Lloyd. “The Decline of the US Steel Industry: Why competitiveness fell against foreign steelmakers,” Finance & Development (IMF), Dec. 1987

(https://www.elibrary.imf.org/view/journals/022/0024/004/article-A009-en.xml)

McClelland, Edward. “Nothin’ But Blue Skies: The Heyday, Hard Times, and Hopes of America’s Industrial Heartland.” (2013)

McElwee, Charles F. “Last Call in the Kennedy Belt,” City Journal 10/28/2020 (https://www.city-journal.org/article/last-call-in-the-kennedy-belt)- on Luzerne Co.

“”The Supply-Chain Empire,” City Journal Magazine Winter 2022 (https://www.city-journal.org/article/the-supply-chain-empire)- on n.e. PA as logistics hub for Northeast.

-“”A Suburban Reckoning in Pennsylvania,” City Journal 11/14/22- midterms

(https://www.city-journal.org/article/a-suburban-reckoning-in-pennsylvania)

-““The GOP Turned Its Back on Science. So Science Turned Its Backs on the GOP,” Politico Magazine 9/8/23 (https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/09/08/pennsylvania-medical-establishment-gop-00114316)- on how PA physicians post-pandemic are boosting Democratic vote.

-“Kamala Harris’s Pennsylvania Problem,” Politico Magazine 9/27/24 (https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/09/27/pennsylvania-harris-2024-election-00180099)

Palomino, Xalma, Juliana Phan, and Rodrigo Dominguez-Villegas. “Voter Profile: Key Facts About Eligible Voters in Pennsylvania.” (https://latinodatahub.org/#/research/voter-profile-pennsylvania), Latino Data Hub.

Price, S.L. “Playing Through the Whistle: Steel, Football, and an American Town.” (2016- Aliquippa)

Serrin, William. “Homestead: The Glory and Tragedy of an American Steel Town.” (1992)

Strohmeyer, John. “The Crisis in Bethlehem: Big Steel’s Struggle to Survive.” (1986)

Winant, Gabriel. “The Next Shift: The Fall of Industry and the Rise of Health Care in Rust Belt America.” (2023)