Trump gained most in northeastern Pennsylvania counties

SCRANTON, Pa. — Matt Wolfson was a construction worker in New Jersey and said his union begged members to vote Democratic in every election. Then Wolfson was injured on the job and felt the union failed to support him through the ordeal that followed.

“I switched parties as soon as I got injured and the union didn’t take care of me” – Wolfson, 45, disabled and eligible for early retirement.

Wolfson, a Scranton resident, expressed hope that former President Donald Trump would defeat Vice President Kamala Harris in last week’s presidential election. However, he did not expect the Republican to win so decisively.

» READ MORE: Donald Trump won Pennsylvania with more votes than any other Republican candidate in history. Here’s how he did it.

“I just wanted to give him a second chance,” he said over lunch in downtown Scranton the day after the election. “We had a pretty good economy before Covid-19 hit.”

Trump improved his 2020 performance in every region of the state. But his gains were most dramatic this year in northeastern Pennsylvania, where voters in post-industrial towns and Poconos mountain towns gave the president-elect the advantage he needed to secure the Keystone State and the White House after losing both in the previous election.

An Inquirer analysis of preliminary election results shows that four of the six counties where Trump saw the largest percentage gains in votes from 2020 are in the Northeast. The biggest raise was in Monroe County in the Poconos, where Trump’s vote totals increased by 3.7% over 2020. Luzerne County, which includes Wilkes-Barre, came in third with a 3% raise.

President Joe Biden’s hometown of Scranton is the seat of Lackawanna County, which ranked fourth, with Trump gaining 2.9%. Harris narrowly won the county, but Trump’s sweeping gains over previous GOP candidates have earned him a reputation as a leader in the political era defined by his rise.

Trump surprisingly lost Lackawanna County by just 3.5 percentage points in his 2016 victory. In the previous election, then-President Barack Obama defeated Republican Mitt Romney in the district by 27 points. Biden appeared to reverse that trend in 2020, beating Trump in the county by 8 percentage points. This year, however, Trump made up for the loss, cutting his deficit to just 3 points against Harris.

These swings are typical of Rust Belt cities across the country, where working-class voters who have long been true Democratic voters have embraced Trump’s economic populism, including his protectionist trade agenda.

Trump saw his margins change overall by 2.5 percentage points in 10 northeastern Pennsylvania counties. He received 6% more votes there this year than in 2020, while Harris received 4% fewer votes than Biden in 2020.

In the state’s remaining 57 counties, the total swing toward Trump was just 0.9 points, with the former president receiving 4% more votes than in 2020 and Harris receiving 3% less than Biden.

Scranton resident Leonard Vaivada said he sees a huge Trump victory coming.

“It wasn’t really surprising,” said Vaivada, a 72-year-old retired house painter. “We really need a secure border. I’m not interested in people saying it’s racist. No, it protects your border.

He said many voters don’t trust Harris on economic issues.

“I want to give away too many things,” he said.

Luzerna GOP is content

In Luzerne County, Republicans aren’t struggling to get over the hump like they are in Lackawanna. They are sitting in the driver’s seat.

After Obama won the county by 5 points in 2012, Trump picked up 19 points in 2016, 14 points in 2020 and 20 points this year.

Luzerne County Republican Party Chairman Gene Ziemba said Trump’s adoption of a “drill, baby, drill” energy policy is working well in a region that has some of the largest fossil fuel deposits in the world and was once dominated by the coal industry and railway.

“This hits the nail on the head. We are in the Marcellus Shale,” he said, referring to Pennsylvania’s large natural gas reserves. Many people in the area hope that Trump’s energy policies will lead to a local economic boom. “We have affordable housing and a ready and willing workforce,” he said.

Another factor in Trump’s big win in the county, he said, was his growing popularity among Latino voters. Local Republican activists in majority-Hispanic Hazleton took it upon themselves to request and distribute 4,000 campaign posters provided by the county GOP in the run-up to the election, Ziemba said.

“The border issue in our county is huge and we have a huge Latino population who, by the way, love Mr. Trump,” Zembia said. “We’re cleaning up here.”

About 18% of residents in the 10 counties in the Northeast are Latino, compared with 8% statewide, and polls have shown the former president is gaining favor among Latino voters.

Ed Mitchell, a Democratic strategist who lives in Kingston, said his party in Lucerne has been in chaos since Republicans took control of local offices in 2012 in a county reorganization that created a GOP-dominated county council.

“There is no question of building a party,” Mitchell said, lamenting that between the 2020-2024 presidential elections, registered Republican voters overtook Democrats on the district lists. “We basically don’t have a Democratic Party. We have a couple of people who are dating.

Mitchell is currently a consultant for a start-up group called Action Together NEPA, which is trying to rebuild the political infrastructure for local Democrats and made gains in last year’s county council races.

“If the Democratic Party is going to come back, at least here in Pennsylvania, it’s going to have to build local,” he said.

Staff writer Julia Terruso contributed to this article.