As the final tallies trickled into the Northampton County voter registration office in Easton early Wednesday morning, Lee Snover saw her hunch about Donald Trump come to fruition.
The tough-talking, no-nonsense real estate magnate and reality television star had won over working class voters of all stripes in Northampton County, coming away with a 6,500-vote margin, a reversal of Republican Mitt Romney’s 6,100-vote loss in 2012.
It was a 12,000-ballot swing in a Democrat-majority county that hadn’t voted for a Republican presidential candidate since 1988, and it was indicative of a trend. In the end, Trump won Pennsylvania by 73,254 votes, according to unofficial returns.
“It really didn’t matter if they were Democrats or Republicans, they said our health care is too high, Obamacare didn’t work,” said Snover, chairwoman of the Northampton County Republican Party and an early Trump supporter. “[Voters said] we want blue-collar jobs and manufacturing, we don’t want to be controlled by the media and elites.”
In recent elections, Democrats have won Pennsylvania in presidential years by piling up huge margins in the urban centers of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, as well as the state’s suburban counties, while leaving the sparsely populated rural counties to Republicans.
Democrat Hillary Clinton executed that strategy well. She came out of Philadelphia with a 450,000-vote margin, won all four of the suburban counties surrounding Philadelphia and carried Allegheny County by 8,400 more votes than President Barack Obama in 2012.
But there is another ingredient in that winning formula. Winning Democratic candidates pad their lead with votes from counties whose cities were former industrial powerhouses, onetime union strongholds such as Wilkes-Barre, Scranton, Bethlehem and Erie.
“They didn’t finish the job,” said Mark Nevins, a Philadelphia Democratic political consultant. “If you want to point to one county where it really fell apart it would be Luzerne — this Wilkes-Barre, coal area, blue-collar county.”
Trump tailored his simple, populist message to that region’s working-class voters, who felt left out and overlooked, Nevins said. Trump visited the area multiple times during the general election campain, holding two rallies in Scranton and one outside Wilkes-Barre.
“He talked about how the system is rigged against them,” Nevins said.
Trump won Luzerne County by more than 25,000 votes, a 30,000-vote swing from 2012, when Obama won the county by 5,000 votes. Trump also trimmed 23,000 votes off Democrats’ 2012 advantage in Lackawanna County, home to Clinton’s childhood summer home of Scranton.
Trump lost Lackawanna by a slim 3,500 votes.
He also performed better than 2012 Republican nominee Mitt Romney in Monroe and Carbon counties, adding about 8,000 votes to Romney’s margin in Carbon, while trimming Democrats’ lead in Monroe by 8,000. Trump lost Lehigh County by 7,100, but cut into Democrats’ 2012 margin there by 4,300 votes.
In Schuylkill County, home to D.G. Yuengling and Son Brewing, whose CEO inserted himself in the race in October by endorsing Trump, Trump won handily, improving upon Romney’s 2012 margin by more than 19,000 votes on the way to winning the county by 27,000.
On the other side of the state, Trump won Erie County by more than 3,000 votes. Romney lost the county by 19,000.
“Those are the Reagan Democrats and working class blue-collar, predominantly ethnic voters who were marking the calendar for Nov. 8 so they could cast a vote for Donald Trump,” said Charlie Gerow, a Republican political consultant in Harrisburg.
Evidence of the Democratic crossover? Clinton received 10,000 fewer votes in Luzerne County and 9,000 fewer votes in Lackawanna County than Josh Shapiro, the lesser-known Democrat who ran successfully for attorney general.
Statewide, Shapiro received 144,000 more votes than Clinton.
That crossover vote was missing in 2012, said Snover, of Bethlehem Township.
“Democrats weren’t voting for Romney,” Snover said. “This year, I had Democrats coming into Republican headquarters, I had Democrats working the polls for us.”
In Northampton County, Clinton’s vote total trailed Shapiro’s by 2,000 votes. Municipalities in the county’s northern reaches voted for Trump by 2-1 margins, while Clinton won only Bethlehem, Easton, Wilson, Glendon and Freemansburg.
In addition, Trump improved on Romney’s vote totals in every Republican-majority county in the state. That meant anywhere from 136 more votes in rural Cameron County to 11,659 more votes for Trump than Romney in Schuylkill County.
Gerow attributed Trump’s competitiveness in those areas to his ability to inspire his followers, and a Republican party field operation that in many parts of the state was better than it was portrayed in the media.
“The enthusiasm for Trump clearly helped carry the day for him,” Gerow said. “That and the lack of enthusiasm for Hillary Clinton.”
Trump tapped into a vein of anti-establishment anger, said Michael Hagan, a Temple University political science professor.
“He seems to have struck a chord with folks in a particular location in the economy and society,” he said. “People who felt left behind or neglected by the changes in the country over the past 10, 20 or 30 years. He talked about politics in a way other [candidates] don’t talk about politics.”
It’s not just Trump’s use of profanity or willingness to offend, he said.
“His way of talking is not a smooth, polished, slick manner of speaking that many politicians learn,” Hagan said. “I think people found that appealing, to be symbolic of his departure from the norm.”
The question is what Trump will do to address the real fears and resentment he tapped into with his campaign, said Larry Ceisler, a Philadelphia political consultant.
“These are the counties that time has forgotten,” Ceisler said. “They are putting great hope in Trump, and there is resentment for the establishment, but I don’t see those manufacturing jobs coming back. These people are angry, but what do they want?”
There is a lesson there for Democratic candidates, he said.
“The positive thing was, he gave voice to people who didn’t think they had one,” Ceisler said. “You have to pay attention to these people and work with them.”
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