(Getty Images)
The top story coming out of Pennsylvania’s 2024 primaries may well have been Nikki Haley’s performance. It was significant enough that it caught the attention of President Joe Biden’s re-election campaign, which made it clear that Haley voters in Pennsylvania would be welcomed in the Biden-Haley camp. Among the voters who cast ballots for Haley was former Republican U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported .
Despite suspending her campaign back on March 6th , the former South Carolina governor still received 157,581 votes or 16.6% of the GOP tally on Tuesday, stemming a trend of decline in her totals. For instance, in the March 19th primaries she averaged 15.3% , but by the April 2nd primaries, that share had dropped to a 12.5% average .
Far more concerning for the Trump campaign, however, is where these Haley votes came from. I compiled a Top Ten Counties List based on Haley’s performance , included below:
- Chester: 24.98%
- Montgomery: 24.66%
- Delaware: 23.49%
- Cumberland: 23.14%
- Dauphin: 20.86%
- Lancaster: 20.41%
- Erie: 20.39%
- Centre: 19.41%
- Allegheny: 19.32%
- Bucks: 19.10%
All four of the crucial Philadelphia collar counties made this list, and even took all three of the top spots. Recall that Biden’s 293,034 vote margin from these counties was essential to his victory in 2020 , as it was a noticeable improvement from Hillary’s 188,353 vote margin in 2016.
Key: Deep Pink – Haley overperformed her statewide average. Light Pink – Haley underperformed her statewide average. (Map by Nick Field via Dave’s Redistricting)
Two years ago, Gov. Josh Shapiro set a new high-water mark when he registered a 388,273 margin out of the southeastern counties. Every step Biden can take towards that Shapiro number will raise his odds of re-election exponentially.
Speaking of Biden’s performance, his turnout as an incumbent President in a noncompetitive primary surpassed three of his immediate predecessors, although the one exception was Donald Trump.
Trump in 2020 and Bush in 2004 both lost the Keystone State despite their superior primary turnout operation, whereas Bill C linton and Obama both won the commonwealth.
It’s difficult to calculate write-in totals in Pennsylvania, although NBC News puts the figure in the Democratic primary at 55,339 or 5.3%. Geographically, the write-in votes tended to come either from the left-leaning areas of Philadelphia or the state’s most rural counties .
Senate Turnout
As for the Senate match-up, while U.S. Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) and GOP candidate David McCormick both ran uncontested, we can still read a bit into the results. For example, Casey managed to out-run Biden by accumulating 1,011,430 votes . A combined 1,010,515 Democrats cast a ballot for Biden or Dean Phillips, meaning that even those who may have cast protest write-in presidential votes still filled in the oval for Casey.
Furthermore, we can compare these results to a similar point in Casey’s career. In 2012, he was on the ballot at the same time as an incumbent Democratic president. We’ve already covered how Barack Obama got 616,102 votes in that race, and down-ballot Sen. Casey received only 565,488 . That year he was dealing with long-shot primary challenger Joseph Vodvarka, who took 133,683 protest votes, or just over 19%.
By November, though, Casey won his race by a 53.69% to 44.59% margin over Republican Tom Smith, outpacing President Obama’s 51.97% to 46.59% margin over Mitt Romney. Altogether, Casey won 31,090 more votes than Obama did, yet he did not win the top spot among statewide candidates, that honor instead went to Democratic attorney general nominee Kathleen Kane ( yes, really ).
Conversely, McCormick got 874,035 votes in Tuesday’s Republican primary. With 948,057 voting for either Donald Trump or Nikki Haley in the presidential contest, that means just over 92% of GOP presidential voters cast ballots for McCormick. These could be Haley protest voters or even Trump supporters who still aren’t enamored with McCormick. In fact, Trump took the time during one of his courthouse statements on Tuesday to urge his Pennsylvania backers to vote for McCormick , so perhaps the McCormick campaign saw poor internal numbers and reached out for help?
The lesson in all these cases is that, while primary results don’t tell us much about November, they do reveal quite a bit about where all the campaigns stand right now.
The post Analysis: Turnout in the Pennsylvania 2024 primary appeared first on Pennsylvania Capital-Star .
Most Popular
Comments / 0