Donald Trump’s appearance in places like Wilkes-Barre could decide the election

Northeastern Pennsylvania is known for its coal mining history, the Pocono Mountains, regional pizza, and increasingly for its role in presidential elections.

Former President Donald Trump will make his first stop in the Northeast on Saturday in Wilkes-Barre as part of his 2024 campaign, after three weeks of campaigning that has become increasingly tense in this key swing state with less than 100 days to go until Election Day.

And as Trump looks at his 2024 electoral map, places like Wilkes-Barre in Luzerne County offer him the most potential and arguably the most uncertainty. While the political trajectory of Pennsylvania’s suburbs and rural areas has followed a somewhat predictable trend, the working-class towns of the Rust Belt have been a political pendulum.

In 2016, Trump’s path to victory in Pennsylvania took him through predominantly white, working-class small towns and midsize cities in the northeast and southwest of the state. Now he is targeting those areas again, hoping to steal votes from Harris in districts that Scranton native President Joe Biden won by a narrow margin.

“The Trump campaign believes there’s still some juice left in that orange for them in the heart of northeastern Pennsylvania,” said Chris Nicholas, a consultant to Pennsylvania Republicans. “If you go to western or north-central Pennsylvania, they’re maximizing their vote. There’s still room for growth in the heart of northeastern Pennsylvania.”

This will be Trump’s seventh visit to Pennsylvania this year and comes at a time when the former president is intensely focused on the Commonwealth that could win him the presidency. He recently proposed holding two presidential debates in Pennsylvania.

And even as Harris’ campaign gains momentum, leading Republicans say they are still cautiously optimistic.

“I believe Luzerne is the keystone to the Keystone,” said Republican county chairman Gene Ziemba as he prepared to host the former president on Saturday.

From Obama to Trump

Luzerne County, where Wilkes-Barre is located, has voted for Trump in the last two elections. It is the only county in the state that switched from President Barack Obama to Trump in 2016 and stayed with Trump in 2020. Registrations have also favored Republicans in recent months, although that is more of a lagging indicator of how people vote.

Nicholas analyzed media markets in Pennsylvania — which has the most ads of any swing state — and noted the outsized attention on the Scranton market, which includes Lackawanna and Luzerne counties. For a region that’s home to just 11% of the state’s population, it’s saturated with ads, an indication that both parties view it as a place to reach undecided or persuadable voters.

Luzerne, like several counties in the Northeast, was firmly in Democratic hands in presidential elections for 20 years until Trump came to power in 2016, winning by 19 percentage points. Today, the county is evenly split between registered Republicans and Democrats, and several Republicans represent the area.

But like the entire Northeast, it is still a battlefield.

“Northeast Pennsylvania is driving Republicans to despair because many of us are waiting for things to turn in the same direction as non-urban southwest Pennsylvania,” Nicholas said. “There are a lot of hard-working blue-collar workers there, but people haven’t moved as far toward the Republicans as some would hope.”

In 2020, about 89% of Luzerne County residents were white, the average median household income was nearly $52,000, and only 23% of people age 25 and older had a bachelor’s degree or higher, according to an aggregation of census data by the website Ballotpedia. There was also a 4% increase in the population of Hispanic or Latino voters in the county from 2016 to 2020.

Luzerne’s second-largest city, Hazelton, is home to a growing Latino population, some of whom are turning to Trump, noted Ziemba, the county chairman.

To gain favor in the region, Trump is exploiting distrust of government institutions and complaints about immigration.

Is Harris faring worse than Biden in northeastern Pennsylvania?

As soon as Harris was named the likely nominee, questions began to arise about how she would fare in areas like the one where Biden spent the first years of his life. “Kamala Harris has a Scranton problem,” was the headline of a recent article on the news site NOTUS.

Scranton is located in Lackawanna County, which is in many ways Luzerne’s sister county. The two counties are home to two major population centers and share a Yankees Triple-A baseball team and radio and television stations.

In 2020, Scranton brought Biden a lot of votes. He won Lackawanna by about 8 percentage points after relying heavily on his Pennsylvania roots during the campaign. Trump won Luzerne County by about 14 percentage points in 2020, 5 points less than in 2016.

Ziemba and other Republicans who know the region believe the Republican vote in both districts is likely to improve without Biden on the ballot.

“The fact that Joe Biden is Joey from Scranton no longer matters, so I think this is closer to the image of Trump in 2016,” said Tim Murtaugh, Trump’s former communications director during his 2020 candidacy.

“Is there any place more different from Scranton than San Francisco?” asked Nicholas, referring to the city where Harris spent much of her career.

Ed Mitchell, a Democratic strategist in the area, pointed to Harris’ strength in national polls among independents, who make up 21,000 of Luzerne’s registered voters. He also said he sees Harris making up ground among non-white, blue-collar voters in the area.

“Is there still a cult of Trump here?” Mitchell asked. “Sure. But we seem to have more job openings here than people to fill them. Food prices are still a problem, but inflation is going down and the roads are being repaired.”

Although the survey results in the region are limited, they do not paint a gloomy picture.

A recent poll of the state by The New York Times and Siena College found Harris to be five percentage points more popular than Biden in the Northeast and Lehigh Valley. It also surpassed Biden’s previous popularity in the region before he dropped out of the race, though the sample was small.

“Everyone says, ‘this district is going to be worse for Harris than it was for Biden,'” said a Republican strategist from Pennsylvania who was wary of officially sounding the alarm. “And I say there is no … district in America that is going to be worse for Harris than it is for Biden.”

Is the honeymoon phase over?

Murtaugh sees the Luzerne rally as a chance for Trump’s campaign, which has had a difficult two weeks, to refocus as Democrats head to Chicago for their convention next week. It was a split picture: Harris providing momentum while Trump struggled to define her.

Murtaugh said Trump should focus his message on fracking on Saturday. Harris opposed it during her 2019 presidential bid but now says she supports it.

“This is a long and sustained upswing, but … she can’t hide forever,” Murtaugh said. “And when she comes out of hiding, it’s going to be awkward having to explain these new positions.”

Ziemba, the county chairman, has simpler advice for Trump when he comes to town. “He has an incredible message and I think he should stick with it,” Ziemba said.

“It’s about jobs, jobs, jobs.”