According to The Associated Press, former President Donald J. Trump has won Pennsylvania and its 19 electoral votes, reversing President Biden’s 2020 triumph in the key swing state.
Pennsylvania was the largest prize among the swing states, and its wealth of electoral votes was critical to Vice President Kamala Harris’ effort to keep the three “blue wall” states bordering the Great Lakes, which include Michigan and Wisconsin.
Pennsylvania’s diversity and size distinguished it from the other battlegrounds, serving as a testing ground for appeals to rural and urban voters, industrial towns and sophisticated suburbs, as well as Black, Hispanic, white, and Asian voters.
Recent history has made the stakes clear: Mr. Trump’s stunning victory over Hillary Clinton in Pennsylvania and the Upper Midwest in 2016 clinched the deal. Four years later, Mr. Biden’s victory there concluded the 2020 race, ensuring Mr. Trump’s defeat and the end of his presidency.
Mr. Trump and Ms. Harris made Pennsylvania their primary priority, investing much more money in it than any other state. And it was in rural Butler, Pennsylvania, that a would-be assassin nearly killed Mr. Trump in July, causing an immediate ripple throughout Pennsylvania and beyond. Mr. Trump came to Butler in October with his billionaire benefactor, Elon Musk, and in the last weeks of the campaign, he conducted rallies in Erie, Allentown, Reading, and Pittsburgh.
Republicans scored substantial gains across Pennsylvania in Tuesday’s election, holding or pushing crucial rural counties — Mr. Trump’s core constituency in the state — to the right.
However, Mr. Trump also received a large number of votes in important metropolitan regions where Ms. Harris relied on heavy Democratic turnout. Mr. Trump’s support increased by more than five percentage points in Lackawanna and Lehigh counties compared to 2020. The counties include the important eastern Pennsylvania metropolis of Scranton, Mr. Biden’s hometown, and Allentown. As of early Wednesday morning, Ms. Harris led in each county, but by a margin of more than five points less than Mr. Biden did in 2020.
Even Pennsylvania’s junior senator, John Fetterman, a Democrat with strong working-class appeal, recognized Pennsylvanians’ kinship with Mr. Trump.
“You can see the intensity,” Mr. Fetterman said one week before the election. “It’s astonishing.”