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Lara Putnam Profile picture
@lara_putnam
Nov 7, 2020 • 8 tweets • 4 min read • Read on X
Beaver County PA—the setting of a good deal of "How will X play with the [implicitly male] white working class in the Rust Belt?" drive-thru reporting since 2016—today.

(You'll notice many celebrating are not white or not men. But apparently live there too and have votes too!)
Joe Biden's margin was one point better than Hilary Clinton's here. Which may not sound impressive until you realized that Dem vote margin had declined here in **every single election since 1988** by 5-10 points every time. So actually, reversing that is a Big Deal! Image
I tweet a lot about Beaver County: like weirdly a lot, for someone not actually employed by the local chamber of commerce. Nested threads (interspersed with election night ranting, sorry) available here if of interest
Kind of stunningly, Republicans were able to increase the absolute number of people showing up to vote for Donald Trump in Beaver county by about 10% from 2016 to 2020. Even more👀, Dems were able to increase the number showing up to vote Dem at the top of the ticket by even more Image
The same thing happened very consistently in similar counties across the region. Some preliminary stats and charts here👇. There'll be lots to analyze & draw lessons from in days ahead
But for now I'll leave you w/ this footage of the Beaver County Young Dems (a group that came together in response to Donald Trump's election 4 ys ago & haven't stopped since) jumping into a frozen river in January to raise money for charity. It sparks joy
More images from Beaver yesterday of the folks on the ground who've been working so hard, for multiple years now, to build a new politics (& new Democratic Party). From rustbeltmayberry.shootproof.com/gallery/beaver… @ErinNinehouser Image
Beaver county, PA Nov 7 2020. This are the faces of the Democratic Party in the rust belt today rustbeltmayberry.shootproof.com/gallery/beaver… ImageImageImage

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More from @lara_putnam

Lara Putnam Profile picture
Sep 4
This🧵is going to be about PA voter registration trends but let me start here. The thing about our beautiful commonwealth is: it's made up of a bunch of different kinds of places whose politics are being pulled in opposite directions. Start w this map, using @AmcommPro categories Image
@AmCommPro Teal=Rural. (Fun fact: PA has the 3rd largest rural pop., in absolute terms, in the whole USA!)
Green="Middle Suburbs." Think Rust Belt: aging ex-industrial.
Orange=Urban suburbs: diverse, dense, educated.
Yellow=exurbs: less dense, less diverse, relatively wealthy.
Pink=Big City Image
@AmCommPro Each of these county-types accounts for a meaningful chunk of population: by 2023 stats, Urban Suburbs are home to 26% of PA's pop; Rural 20% [or ~23% if you add the 2 smaller rural categories to it], MiddleSuburb (=Ex-Industrial) 18%, Exurbs 17%, Big City (=Philadelphia) 12% Image
Read 16 tweets
Lara Putnam Profile picture
Nov 9, 2023
to appreciate the scale of Dems' statewide success this wk you have to cast your mind back to the distant past of... Nov 2021, at whch point it looked fully possible the PA electorate would keep speeding rightward twice as fast as it had lurched left after the election of DJTrump
Here's an even clearer metric I ended up with, one that captures turnout shifts as well as vote choice swings: change in net votes by county, averaged across statewide candidates each year to create something close to generic Dem v generic Rep results Image
In Delco, Montco, Philly & Allegheny Dems had hung on to some anti-Trump era gains, but pretty much everywhere else* across the state—most impactfully in Bucks, SCPA, & the big non-Allegheny counties of SWPA--Republicans were ascendant

*ok Dauphin Lackawanna & Monroe broke even Image
Read 12 tweets
Lara Putnam Profile picture
Nov 13, 2022
It was certainly plausible to think that John Fetterman would have a uniquely strong performance among white working-class or rural Pennsylvanians but... that didn't turn out to be the case at all?🤷‍♀️
The results are especially striking because surely holding everything equal, one would expect Doug Mastriano's appeal to be strongest in the rural+rust belt areas that swung hard in support of Donald Trump: & Oz to be more appealing in the upscale/moderate/cosmopolitan suburbs?
The darker green counties here are the ones where Shapiro outperformed Fetterman most strongly: which is the same as saying, where Oz outperformed Mastriano most strongly. SCPA/the capitol region, Bucks, but also Cambria, Westmoreland, Butler, Erie🤷‍♀️
Read 14 tweets
Lara Putnam Profile picture
Nov 11, 2022
Return of the 2018 Coalition, On Steroids (A Quick Thread on 2022 in Pennsylvania Before this Website Collapses).

tl;dr After Dobbs, the suburbs' anti-Dem realignment screeched to a halt & the anti-Trump realignment returned Image
Lots of things happened around the end of June: Dobbs, bipartisan bills, gas prices coming down, Jan 6 hearings gaining news. The exact proportions of which had an impact on who may remain up for debate. But what's clear is things changed & stayed changed
The geography of voter reg trend shifts was striking: Dems stopped hemorrhaging voters in PA's "Middle Suburb"/once-industrial counties: & went back to posting 2016-18 style gains in PA's upscale/cosmopolitan "Urban Suburb" counties
Read 20 tweets
Lara Putnam Profile picture
Nov 9, 2022
This👇is not wrong! But note it's not just a demographic thing. The state & local organizations created/recreated by the anti-Trump grassroots ran through the tape for downballot Dems this year: even while hearing (& believing!) national voices foretelling doom
National voices #onhere have not yet processed what a stunning year this was for downballot Dems in PA. The inverse of 2020, when the presidential result distracted attention from PA Dems' grim downballot slide. PA lived the midterm backlash 2 ys early!💪
.@LetsTurnPABlue @TuesdaysToomey @acttogethernepa etc — plus the groups of different origin & profile who saw their potential & figured out how to partner: @seiuhcpa @NewPennsylvania @UniteforPA & many more
Read 13 tweets
Lara Putnam Profile picture
Nov 9, 2022
Because you are all about to realize you need to know this: in 2021 Democratic PA Supreme Court candidate Maria McLaughlin's share of provisional ballots in both Lehigh & Northampton counties was exactly 20 ppt higher than her share of EDay+Mail votes in each.
...& likewise in Montgomery County. fwiw. 👀
... and likewise in Bucks 👀 . 2021 provisionals were 19 ppts more Dem than the combined E-Day and Mail ballots were.
Read 4 tweets

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