How Will Pennsylvania Voting Groups Influence the 2024 Election? Highlights from Our Reddit AMA

With two months to go before Election Day, Pennsylvania and Philadelphia are at the center of the 2024 presidential election and will play a key role in determining which party wins the White House. We analyzed how voting patterns among five key groups have changed—and whether those trends continue or reverse will be key to who wins the state.

Hosted by The Inquirer AMA (“Ask Me Anything”) in collaboration with the r/politics subreddit to answer readers’ questions about this analysis.

Here are highlights from national political reporter Julia Terruso and data reporter Aseem Shukla. Some questions and answers have been edited for length, clarity and tone.

I would like to know the profiles of undecided voters at this point. The choices seem so starkly different that I simply cannot imagine how anyone could be undecided right now.

Julia Terruso: There are undecided voters, but they make up a very tiny portion of the electorate (about 2% in a recent Emerson College poll in Pennsylvania). Polls have a difficult time picking up on undecided voters because these voters often aren’t paying attention — and that means they don’t respond to polls.

That said, in a state like Pennsylvania, where the presidency was decided by just over 1 percentage point in 2020 and by a little less in 2016, they still matter. I think you’ll see both candidates try to pull out their bases and focus on turnout, given that mail-in voting starts soon and the road to November is compact.

This is also because it is nearly impossible to reach undecided voters as a single group.

There’s an instinct to think of undecided voters as politically engaged moderates grappling with political contrasts. That almost never happens. Most just aren’t paying attention yet. I checked in with undecided voters just before the 2022 midterms, and you’ll see that their reasons for being undecided varied. We’ll do something similar for undecideds in the presidential race soon, and I expect a somewhat mixed reaction.

Do you think selecting Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as Kamala Harris’ vice presidential running mate would generate more votes in red Pennsylvania than if Harris chose Gov. Josh Shapiro?

Julia Terruso: It’s really difficult to say. Gov. Josh Shapiro outperformed President Joe Biden in 2020 statewide, including in rural areas when he was elected governor in 2022. As we mentioned in another answer, polls show that some supporters of former President Donald Trump also support Shapiro. That said, Shapiro’s hometown and political roots are in Montgomery County, which is largely a middle- to upper-middle-class suburban county. So Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s personal history and upbringing certainly more closely align with the average rural voter in Pennsylvania.

People do vote for the top of the ticket, so I’m not sure it makes much difference. And some Democrats argued after Shapiro was passed over that his availability to campaign for her in the state (rather than traveling the country as a vice presidential candidate) could be beneficial in activating voters for her in Pennsylvania.

Genie offers you the ability to see future precinct-level results for the 2024 presidential race from a single county in Pennsylvania. Which one will you choose?

Aseem Shukla: I love this question. I don’t know if I have one answer, but here’s how I think about choosing a site. It all comes down to what type of political geography is represented in a given county.

Of the five groups we’re looking at, I don’t expect huge moves in two of them: rural areas are likely to remain very red, and white college-educated areas are likely to remain very blue. Both groups also have fairly high turnout. So counties that disproportionately represent those areas aren’t as intriguing.

The other three groups—suburban areas, white working-class urban areas, and nonwhite urban areas—are intriguing for different reasons. Will moderate, middle-class suburbanites like Harris as much as Biden, or more? Was the white working-class shift toward Biden specific to his candidacy? Are black and Latino voters, especially teenage men, still skeptical of Democrats when Harris is at the top of the ticket—and will they vote for her?

For that reason, I’d like to pick a county that tells us something about each of these groups. All of the counties below have a lot of areas that fit that description:

What do these places have in common? A mix of rural, urban, and suburban, not very affluent areas, including several dense cities with black and Latino neighborhoods and white working-class neighborhoods. All are in the eastern half of the state, outside the greater Philadelphia area, and include at least one mid-sized city. Don’t make me pick just one!

What concerns do Latino and black voters who are reluctant to vote for Harris have? And does that mean they’ll stay home?

Julia Terruso: So I think we’re still getting a full picture of how Harris is doing with these groups. Early polls show her regaining ground that Biden lost, but she’s still struggling to reach the levels achieved by her Democratic predecessors.

While Trump has made a concerted effort to reach out to black and Latino voters and has slightly increased his support compared to his previous cycle, there aren’t huge numbers of black and Latino voters who are switching to his side. The bigger concern for Democrats is surely that those voters won’t show up.

Most black and Latino voters list the economy as their top priority in polls, and Trump still does better on that than Harris. For some Latino voters, immigration is an issue where Trump does better in polls. But I think that’s going to be an ongoing question that we’re going to try to answer. The gender divide is really intriguing — and it was there before Harris was nominated!

Is there a single source where you can easily find out how the polls are looking in Pennsylvania?

Aseem Shukla: For now, the best free source remains FiveThirtyEight. (If you want to splurge a little, Nate Silver’s paid service Silver Bulletin on Substack is also a good source.)

Just remember to feel around a bit; the polls are likely to remain close, at least for now, and it’s best not to get caught up in any poll’s results. That said, if you carefully examine the crosstabulations in the major polls, you can get a sense of which groups are changing. The Inquirer worked with The New York Times and Siena College on a Pennsylvania poll released in May and will conduct another poll in September.

I think it will all come down to a few counties in Pennsylvania. What is the “Mount Rushmore” of counties in Pennsylvania that will most likely decide this election? Is there any data on the Trump and Harris campaigns’ field operations?

Julia Terruso: If we’re talking about the state’s signature counties, a good trio to look at are the three “pivot” counties that went from voting for former President Barack Obama in 2012 to former President Donald Trump in 2016. Those are Erie, Northampton and Luzerne counties. But I would also add Bucks County, which is reliably purple and the only county in the Southeast still represented by a Republican in Congress.

But because every vote in every county matters, the project we just did on the five types of seats that are winning in Pa. is designed to look at the types of seats that are winning and losing in the state. It’s a comprehensive look at where both parties are gaining and losing support across the state among different voting blocs.

In terms of field offices, Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign has set up 36 in the state, including several in Philadelphia and surrounding suburban counties. The Trump campaign has been slower to establish offices here, but is now working in fairly close coordination with county-level GOP offices across the state.

What questions should curious voters who consume an above-average amount of political media be asking themselves about polls and data? When you take a swing state like Pa., what do you focus on and why?

Aseem Shukla: It’s a great question, and it’s difficult to know what to ask. We’re not pollsters ourselves — but The Inquirer is working with pollsters from the NYT and Siena College this year. In general, here are some things to look for: