The state that is most likely to make the difference between victory and defeat for Donald Trump and Joe Biden is a microcosm of the United States.
With 47 days before the vote, it can be said that the outcome of the presidential election will largely depend on a state that was decisive in Donald Trump’s victory in 2016.
Pennsylvania, nicknamed Keystone State, sits exactly in the center of the distribution of voting intentions and therefore has a good chance of being literally the keystone of this election. In 2016, Donald Trump overcame a delay in the polls and narrowly capped Hillary Clinton. Will he be able to repeat the feat in 2020? We can doubt it.
A microcosm
Pennsylvania is a land of strong contrasts. At the eastern and western ends are the great cosmopolitan cities of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh and their suburbs.
In between are rural areas culturally close to southern states and formerly prosperous industrial towns now decimated by declining manufacturing. While large cities are largely dominated by Democrats and rural areas by Republicans, suburbs are divided. Small industrial towns in decline were traditionally Democrats, but Donald Trump succeeded in tipping them over in 2016.
The Battle of the Suburbs
Donald Trump is counting on his message focused on law and order to rally the vote of white suburbanites who fear that the “disorder” and – above all – the ethnoracial diversity of large cities will disrupt their peaceful existence.
At the moment, it doesn’t work. In the 2018 midterm elections, better-educated suburban residents, especially women, had abandoned the Republican Party. Today, there are elderly voters who supported Trump in 2016, but many of whom were disillusioned with his catastrophic handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The symbol of Scranton
Rural areas of the state are in Trump’s hands, but Democrats anticipate gains among the elderly. What will largely determine the outcome in the state is the blue-collar vote of small towns like Scranton, where the big factories of yesteryear are now empty hulks.
Scranton is also the hometown of Joe Biden, who has an ability to connect with those left behind by globalization that Hillary Clinton did not have. Thanks in part to this privileged connection, since last April Biden has maintained a solid lead of four or five percentage points over Trump in Pennsylvania.
Hillary Clinton had entered the home stretch of the campaign with a comparable lead in 2016, but the Pennsylvania electorate was less anchored in its positions by then and Clinton did not have the capital of sympathy that Biden enjoys.
Along with Florida, Arizona and Wisconsin, Pennsylvania is definitely a hotspot of this election. Between now and November 3, the suburbs and countryside of this state will not be peaceful.
