Pennsylvania Looks Ready To Reject Trump In November

'The Republican presidential primary in Pennsylvania showed Trump's fundamental weakness as a candidate.

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Trump’s Pennsylvania Nightmare

Photo by Addy Mae on Unsplash

I am a lifelong Pennsylvanian. I have seen parts of this state thrive, decline, and be reborn. There are also parts that declined, fell under Republican control, and have never rebounded in more than four decades. Pennsylvania is a large state made up of several political dynamics that all must be successfully juggled for a candidate to win statewide.

Democrats have been surging in statewide and state House legislative races in recent years as the state's population growth is centered around the Philadelphia suburbs and eastern part of the state.

We have quite a few Pennsylvania subscribers and readers, but we also have subscribers and readers from around the world, so I am going to keep our discussion of Pennsylvania general, and my fellow Pennsylvanians can add more detail about their home areas in the comments below.

The key point to understanding the results is that the Pennsylvania primary is a closed primary. Independents are not allowed to vote, and crossover voting is prohibited, so the votes for Nikki Haley came from registered Republican voters.

Trump needs to rebound and win Pennsylvania in 2024. Without winning Pennsylvania, Donald Trump probably can’t win the election.

The results of Tuesday night’s Pennsylvania Republican primary were a disaster for him and the Republican Party.

Nikki Haley got over 150,000 votes and nearly 17% of the vote after she quit the race and never set foot in Pennsylvania nearly two months ago. How and where she performed best is a giant alarm bell for Republicans.

Haley was strongest in the Pittsburgh and Philadelphia suburbs. Those are the same voters that Trump must take away from Biden to have any chance at the state in November.

Trump was running against a zombie candidate and only got 83% of the vote. In contrast, President Biden got over 93% of the vote with fellow zombie candidate Dean Phillips on the ballot in the Democratic primary and 141,000 more votes overall than Trump.

Primary night was a disaster for Republicans and when we dig down a bit, we see that Trump has some structural problems in Pennsylvania.