Gonna re-up this article now for the midnight obsessing about Pennsylvania county level results crowd: Wrote it 16 months which is to say a century ago but holds up pretty well americancommunities.org/in-pennsylvani…
As a reminder this is what Pennsylvania looks like through @AmCommPro's very helpful categories. Many "rural middle America" counties, lots of ex-industrial/partly recovered "middle suburbs", then exurbs & urban suburbs in the Philly collar & around Pittsburgh
Fully half of the population of PA lives in a Middle Suburb or Rural Middle America county. But also: fully half does not: concentrating instead in Urban Suburbs, Exurbs, College Town, or Big City (=Philadelphia) counties
Obviously, ballots are still being counted, patience is called for, etc etc etc. But poking around the numbers reported, I actually think the big picture of what happened in PA in this election is pretty clear. And (tl;dr) it's not a happy picture for Donald Trump.
Back of envelope big picture: in PA's Rural Middle America counties Biden overperformed Clinton by a point or two: but surging turnout numbers there, + the very low Dem baseline, mean Biden carried a larger vote deficit than Clinton out of those counties in absolute terms
Across PA's "Middle Suburb" counties the picture for Biden is mixed, because... Middle Suburbs are complicated. No really. Like I spend days on end just tweeting about them
Wrote a whole "29 minute read" about political change underway in Pennsylvania's Middle Suburbs actually. (Possibly a better use of your late night screen time than doom scrolling and hitting refresh?) democracyjournal.org/magazine/57/ru…
Biden outperformed Clinton in Middle Suburb counties between a little & a medium amount. In Washington (maybe the one county in the state where the politics of fracking did drag down) he outperformed Clinton only barely: & increased turnout means he carried a bigger deficit out
In Lackawanna tho, where Clinton lost much ground from 2012 (& before) & barely broke even, Biden benefitted from both swing & turnout & carries 6,000 more votes out than Clinton did
Likewise in Erie, Biden reversed the Obama-to-Trump swing & turned a 2,000 vote deficit in 2016 into a 4-8000 vote surplus (counting ongoing) today
(Side note: it really wasn't so much an "Obama-Trump" swing there or elsewhere: more like a long term GOP trend in former industrial strongholds, which Obama delayed for a bit and then Donald Trump re-accelerated.)
With both some Election Day votes & some mail-in votes still out in several Middle Suburb counties like Berks, Westmoreland etc the total numbers are still unknown: At a guess could well look like Wolf's 2014-18 small aggregate gain in these counties americancommunities.org/in-pennsylvani…
But all of this has just been a long lead up to report the essential fact that the numbers that Biden is posting in the last crucial categories of PA counties—the Urban suburbs and Exurbs—are massive. So big that here I am at 4 am rubbing my eyes to make sure I'm doing math right
And before any malicious figures jump to say how could they be so huge isn't something fishy going on, please note that I, a lowly historian wrote at length *16 mos ago* about the intense local organizng driving unprecedented political change exactly here americancommunities.org/in-pennsylvani…
& I am, frankly, beyond incensed by the fact that nominally quantitative pundits are putting out graphics mutely showing DJT "leading" PA with 70% of ballots counted, when Biden is winning *88%* of mail-in votes in eg Montco & Montco has *124,000* mail-in votes yet to count
Like, did we not learn from the coronavirus pandemic that clear science communication is essential to public health, & poor science communication opens the door to disinformation that itself has the power to change events? & now literally we are reenacting the same mistakes here?
This is no time to be coy or treat the ballot count as a charming plot twist. I would much rather ths be someone else's problem but: if you are a professional with expertise & evidence & know that claims of a Trump victory in PA are just flatly wrong, now is the time to speak up!
Again: In Pennsylvania's Urban Suburb & Exurb counties, turnout was through the roof, the swing from Clinton to Biden was intense, & mail-in ballot uptake was extremely high: driven by the same intensity of political action that swung those counties Left👇 americancommunities.org/in-pennsylvani…
84,000 mail in votes have yet to be counted in Chester, west of Philly, where Biden is winning 80% of mail ballots. He is on path to net 50,000 votes in a county Clinton carried by "only" 25,000.
Meanwhile there are *227,000* mail-in votes not yet counted in Allegheny County, where Biden is currently winning 81% of mail-in ballots.
Remember all those articles you read over the last weeks about women's grassroots groups in PA's comfortable suburbs stumping hard for Biden/Harris + down ballot candidates? *THAT dynamic is why these counties' mail-in votes are so overwhelmingly Biden* nytimes.com/2020/10/28/us/…
As an aside, how would we ever treat 2020 exit polls as a reflection of the US electorate, when by definition they capture the disproportnatly pro-Trump slice of the 2020 electorate who chose to vote in person in a pandemic amid polarizing attacks on VBM. Am I missing something?
I am not going to re-link here to all the many carefully reported articles over the past month that chronicled the intensive voter outreach underway in battleground states' suburbs. Follow this thread for some👇

But here's the key point: They Banked Votes
I am trying to remain calm but there is an active misinformation campaign underway to hijack perceptions of legitimacy & derail the vote count in PA. & my husband just wandered into the room having watched network news last night & then slept, asking how Biden came to lose PA😱😬
Biden is firmly on track to win PA. Of course for those who care about progressive futures there will be urgent self critique ahead. But NOT YET. Today the rule of law is under extraordinary threat: & every person reading this has the power to help save it nytimes.com/2020/11/04/ups…
THIS👇 For everyone reading this, incl. me typing it
1) Useful thread :) 2) Actually, turns out the dynamics that led to individuals choosing to vote by mail in advance were everywhere so tied to Democratic networks & outreach that *even in Lancaster county* (Trump+19 in 2016) 73% of mail ins are Biden
More updates from PA's Middle Suburbs: Biden has taken Northampton, which Trump carried by 5000 in 2016, by 1000 votes
.@4st8 doesn't lie. Biden's PA margin may be 2-3x that Donald Trump won with in 2016. Is there a way we can pause & gaze straight on at the radical asymmetry of commtment to democracy in the way these two elections played out here & figure out, what now?
Another Middle Suburb heard from: York👇. Once again we see a small improvement for Biden over Clinton's margin: but increased turnout in the county means the vote deficit generated for Biden was just as large

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More from @lara_putnam

5 Nov
Big picture 🔥take: Donald Trump is uniquely toxic among upscale GOP voters in cosmopolitan suburbs, & also uniquely successful in getting would-be GOP voters to the polls in less affluent & less engaged places. Hence contrasting down ballot results 2018 vs 2020
The full picture, much less granular data, is still to come. But consistently disappointing results for Dem candidates of widely varied ideology across the country should I hope inspire rethinking that goes beyond usual "moderate" vs "Left" or mobilization vs persuasion sniping
The kitchen sink was thrown at this election, and in a context of extremely narrow victories of course anything & everything mattered: "the 10,000 votes due to [x] were crucial!" is a defensible take for any single x people tried, in a world where key states are won by 20,000
Read 7 tweets
4 Nov
With so many eyes on PA let me offer a thread of threads pointing to reporting by amazing journalists here in the last 6 months or so, which capture some of the contradictory forces pushing in opposite directions. 1st: @CharlotteAlter on the COVID/disinfo epistemic fracture
2nd @Chris_Maag on the swirl of false rumors & fears spread on social media regarding #BlackLivesMatter . northjersey.com/story/news/col…
3rd an earlier piece from @Chris_Maag capturing the fraught navigation and deep courage of young people of color in Central PA doing their best to become movement builders in spite of that
Read 7 tweets
3 Nov
Aggregate two-party presidential margins held rock steady in Allegheny county from 1996-2016, hovering between D+14.5 & D+16.5 as upscale suburbs turned from red to purple, while working-class Dem strongholds lost population, Dem allegiance, or both democracyjournal.org/magazine/57/ru…
Read 5 tweets
9 Aug
Three carefully reported articles from non-metro PA that should be read together. They offer radically different takeaways, but by listening carefully to diff voices capture the same reality: very real currents moving in opposite directions, w/gender & esp generation key divides
First, from @JuliaTerruso a really thoughtful account of aging white men continuing to move away from the Democratic party in Carbondale, as union jobs & allegiance forged 2 generations ago fade, & messages about "far left" extremes resonate... with some inquirer.com/politics/penns…
But note the civic stalwart aging moms rejecting the Trump msg... & the 20something daughter sad about political division but outspoken on racial injustice: “My heart hurts for the minorities in this town because I don’t feel like they’re treated properly." Image
Read 22 tweets
17 Jun
#GeorgeFloyd solidarity protests have been held in over 135 different communities across PA already. Here's one way to think about the new geography they trace. I've mapped them on top of the @AmCommPro map. Notice how many are in Rural Middle America & Middle Suburb counties.
Fully half the state's population lives in those two county types. But "rural middle America" doesn't match stereotypes (few folks work in agriculture; more are middle income than poor). And "middle suburbs" don't look like the upscale sites of privilege the term suburb may evoke
PA's more rural counties swung extra hard for Donald Trump in 2016. But because the Middle Suburbs are home to fully a third of the state's population, the swing there was critical. These are the state's former industrial heartlands: and onetime union & Democratic strongholds
Read 20 tweets
3 Jun
It's hard not to read the PA HD 34 primary results as evidence in the debate over whether protests in response to the murder of George Floyd will cause white suburban backlash. (quick thread)
(First pausing to emphasize that any debate over electoral consequence should not distract from the existential issues of race-based structural and physical violence Floyd's death reflected—nor from the urgency of supporting protestors putting themselves on the front lines now).
If suburban whites were going to react to the events of recent days by pulling back from progressive candidates or those speaking up for racial justice, we should have seen that yesterday in PA HD 34. It's a 70% white district, whose past was riven by court-ordered integration
Read 13 tweets

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