Welcome to the sh!tshow, ladies and gentlemen.

In the time since I last wrote an article for Pivot Point , things in Pennsylvania have changed on a fundamental level. President Biden opted out of running for re-election after a series of missteps post-SOTU, a shaky debate that left many people concerned, and increasingly dim polling. Vice President Harris is now running as the standard bearer for Democrats and has consolidated everyone in the party behind her candidacy rather quickly, to say the least. Former president Trump was convicted of a number of felony counts and selected Ohio senator JD Vance as his running mate. It is now up to Harris to respond and select a VP of her own, the choice of which could make an impact on this rapidly-changing election.

And where would such an election be without Pennsylvania? The Keystone State remains as important as ever, especially as it continues to have a fairly high chance of being the tipping point state, the state that secures enough electoral votes to win the presidency, and thus the election between VP Harris and former President Trump. Before diving into those dynamics, let me make one thing clear - the contours of the down ballot delta in races across the state remains the same. As with Biden, I fully expect Senator Casey to outrun Harris. Other races are slightly more uncertain at the time of this writing, but I would anticipate the auditor general and treasurer races to track very closely to the fate of the top of the ballot.

Presently, right there at the top is a whole lot of chaos. It’ll settle down in the coming days as the state’s electorate processes the aftermath of Harris stepping in for Biden along with a series of other events that unfolded rapidly, including the attempted assasination of Trump in Butler, a town north of Pittsburgh. And guess what? All of that happened in a matter of weeks. A rematch election between two old candidates ended up being anything but typical.

But how did we get here? Let’s rewind.

In my previous article in February, Biden was on decent ground. Indeed, my Combined Pennsylvania Average (CPA) at that time actually had him up by a little more than 2 points versus Trump. It was also before his lauded State of the Union in March, now considered the high water mark of his 2024 candidacy. 

That would not last, however.

The first few months after the State of the Union proceeded as usual. Primaries came and went, observations were made, and Biden’s margin in the CPA fluctuated between 1 and 2.2 points on average with that margin trending toward the 1 point mark as time went on and we got more polling. Still, his slight lead was sustained until early summer, bolstered by in-state polls that tended to be a little rosier for him than national firms. They were consistent with my belief that the president’s coalition, when push came to shove, would eek out a narrow win for him in November. Buoying that were Dems’ strong victories in 2022 and 2023 that demonstrated the new political center of gravity in the state - southeastern Pennsylvania and its high-propensity, rapidly blue-ifying voters.

In late June, that belief was shattered.

I’ve lived through bad debates before. I was one of the few voices in the aftermath of the Fetterman v. Oz debate saying that the race wouldn’t fundamentally change. That sentiment proved correct in the end, backed up by Fetterman’s consistent leads in *good* polling, financial advantage, being way ahead in the favorable game, etc. A debate of that caliber was not going to shake up the dynamics of that particular race.

With Biden, it was different. With age being at the forefront of voters’ minds and the one thing you can’t heal with time, putting that together with a lot of underlying frustrations about him just added gasoline to the fire. Most people were not keen at all about a rematch and with age being known to have electoral penalties when it rears its ugly head in ways you can’t control, panic ensued. The coalition I envisioned with Biden would’ve only worked had he kept initial concerns about his ability to hold the presidency to where it was around the State of the Union. I hear whispers and grumblings across Pennsylvania daily, and let me tell you that it magnified to a full-blast bullhorn crescendo after the debate. The concerns were on an entirely different level and pointed to significant sagging in enthusiasm. There was now a higher degree of uncertainty about if push would come to shove. Certain electoral blocs in Pennsylvania would now be more inclined to lay down. Around this time, Trump was riding on a series of electoral luck and successes as his candidacy progressed.

Then the polls started rolling in.

While I am not at liberty to discuss its contents, some internal surveys after the debate showed problems. Third party and undecided voters were spiking, concentrated mostly on three crucial parts of Biden’s coalition - minorities, soft Republicans and indie voters, the latter two of which have been vital to healthy Democratic wins in the state recently. And it’s not as if enthusiasm was super high amongst base Democrats anyway. This was also reflected in public polling, as narrow Trump leads of 1, 2, 3 points started turning into 4, 5, 6, etc. Privately, many battleground Democratic representatives were expressing concerns about what they were seeing from those numbers with some ready to call for the president to step down if necessary.

Biden was now facing a problem that didn’t have a readily available fix. And the voters he needed hate being made fools of. They hate having to drag theselves to vote for a candidate they’re not stoked for. Or even moderately pleased about. “Both candidates are bad” is not something you can rely on when your advantage with double haters is not as robust as it once was, weighed down by an unshaken belief by voters that you will not last another term in office. Whether it’s fair or not doesn’t matter. The new Pennsylvania Democratic coalition is able to do its job and outpace the GOP bloc as long as it stays together. That was no longer reasonably assured.

And so… the debate changed everything. Rare for debates to do that these days, but we live in unprecedented times. After a few weeks of reflection and facing an internal revolt within his party, Biden made the choice to step down from his candidacy. It was likely the right move. The stage was set for a reset, pun intended.

And enter: VP Harris.

First things first - embrace unpredictability. President Biden’s decision was nearly unprecedented in modern times, especially this close to the election. Polls are showing significant swings to Harris to the point where what was once a race favored toward Trump has returned to tossup status. Who knows? Maybe things will keep accelerating and a month from now, she’ll be the prohibitive favorite to win the election. We don’t know yet; perhaps the opposite will occur. What we do know is that Biden likely made the right decision to drop out from an electoral lens. Over the last few days, firms have been releasing head-to-head matchups between Harris and Trump, both from in-staters and nationals.

Take the esteemed Fox News poll, for instance. They showed a 49-49 tie between both candidates in Pennsylvania. Shortly before that, Commonwealth, a GOP-leaning local firm, released one showing Harris up by 1 point. And arguably, the biggest splash so far has been from another local firm by the name of Susquehanna (SP&R) when they dropped a poll showing Harris up by 4 points. We’ll see if numbers like those pan out over the next few months, but the Vice President’s initial numbers slightly surprised me. I find myself having to revisit some assumptions with the data, especially with the necessity of recalibrating the CPA for this new matchup.

Relatedly, here’s a fresh release of the CPA in terms of where that race and others stand today.

I stress that those numbers will be in flux up until Election Day, so you should not take them as gospel. Nevertheless, this is better than expected for a candidate that was switched in at a tumultuous time and has to retool her campaign, that was designed for Biden, from scratch with less than 100 days to go. Driving this is better than expected margins with white voters (at least for now) and slight increases with other blocs across the board in polling, mostly the groups Biden was struggling heavily with.

And since we’re on the topic, we need to talk about white voters. Namely, rural and white working class people that are scattered across the state. Biden and Harris have different considerations with their coalitions; some aspects will be swapped between them with this candidate switch. I get the sense that you’re not going to see a true 1:1 replica of Biden 2020 when it comes to margins between certain groups.

Let me put it this way - I am now significantly less concerned about Harris driving turnout and good splits amongst minorities and suburbanites. What has emerged as more of an open question, however, is if she sees any backsliding amongst rural and working class voters beyond the southeastern and western portions of the state. Those voters cost Hillary Clinton the win back in 2016, before surburbanites had realigned as earnestly for Democrats as they do now.

If Harris keeps her numbers with those types of people roughly similar to Biden or recent statewide Dems (McCaffery 2023, Fetterman 2022, etc.), she’ll win. She could even afford to lose a few points from the typical Dem baseline you see in counties like Schuylkill, Adams, Venango, etc. and she would probably still be fine. Southeastern Pennsylvania is a force that can outpace that kind of margin with optimal turnout. It also belies the fact that the region has a decent chance of shifting left from 2020. It certainly did so in 2022 and 2023!

The problem is if we start seeing drops in excess of 5, 6, 7 points across the board in those outer rural areas. If that happens, Trump will be able to eek out a win. Turnout has faded away as a differential issue and I wager that we’re facing an election that will be decided on certain margins. For Trump, he has to turbocharge his base turnout to where it was in 2020 and ensure that Harris sees at least mid-single digit drops in the aforementioned areas. He’s also relying on, to an extent, slightly better minority margins for him in places like Philadelphia, but that is essentially a non-factor for me at this time as far as other data points are concerned.

For Harris, the response has to be to keep the white vote to where it should usually be for Pennsylvania Democrats. If not, keep the bleeding at a minimum and have it offset by either a stronger suburban and/or minority vote than in 2020. It does not need to be a particularly large shift either. A continuous issue for the GOP is that a, say, 2 point shift left from Montgomery County can easily nuke an equivalent shift to the right in a few dozen of the smallest rural counties.

And one last word for Trump and Republicans - I would exercise caution about south central Pennsylvania, particularly in counties like York and Lancaster. Those places are some of their biggest red vote dumps and they have been starting to put up lackluster margins for Republicans recently. Will that trend continue or see a reversion to the mean? Time will tell.

In short, the differentials in margins with separate groups of white people will make or break this election. The state is composed of roughly 80% of those, anyway.

Races and VEEPStakes

And so the stage is set. While Harris has yet to make her VP selection as of the time of this writing, no doubt she will be weighing how this pick can help her electorally. It is not lost on many analysts that Governor Shapiro would be an asset to the ticket, particularly with his absurd 60%+ approval ratings and strong personal brand in Pennsylvania. I am of the opinion that he does give her a small electoral boost, but nothing crazy. We have seen some evidence of this in public and private surveys testing if voters would be more receptive to a ticket with Shapiro on it. The data tends to say yes. And in a state like Pennsylvania, even a 0.5% boost could well be decisive.

But that’s not my choice to make. Once the VP is selected, the last major piece of the puzzle will be locked in for November. Candidates are in position in major races up and down the ticket, hundreds of polls will be conducted over the next few months, and a deluge of unholy amounts of money will be put into ads and voting campaigns from now until the polls close on November 5th. Seriously, Pennsylvania is going to see more GDP than a third world country shoveled into every street corner from Erie to King of Prussia.

And on that happy note, this is where we’ll leave things for now. I can’t claim to know what will happen movement-wise in the next 100 days. Nobody saw how the last month ended up going, so I would think it’s a fair assessment to reserve judgement until campaigns start kicking into high gear and the race becomes more stable. Harris knows what she needs to do. Trump does as well. The question is going to be whose strategy ends up working better. Or perhaps more critically, whose strategy ended up being a colossal mistake. But I will say this - in Pennsylvania, trying to win based solely on juicing your base doesn’t work. The last three cycles have borne that out. Be wise, have a reasonable temperament, and understand that not everyone is going to share the same views, especially in a place as diverse as this one.

Until next time.

*Joshua Smithley works in the aviation industry and has a passion for Pennsylvania politics while specializing in data analysis and electoral breakdowns for the state