Donald Trump will win Pennsylvania by at least 100,000 votes. An analysis of how Pennsylvania’s counties voted in the U.S. Presidential Elections of 2016 and 2020 will support this hypothesis. Trump will increase his votes in the counties he won in the two previous elections. He will also reduce his losses in the counties that went in the very same two elections to his opponents.
Kamala Harris will not win more than 13 counties out of 67 counties. They are Erie, Centre, Dauphin, Monroe, Lackawanna, Lehigh, Northampton, Philadelphia, Bucks, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, and Allegheny. In 2020, Trump lost Erie and Northampton by less than three thousand votes. In the counties of Centre, Dauphin, Lackawanna, Monroe, and Lehigh his lowest performance was 44.9% in Dauphin. Therefore, his losses will not be big figures for Kamala Harris.
Harris has a chance to win six counties. There is Allegheny County where the city of Pittsburgh is found and the city/county of Philadelphia, in addition to its five suburbs of Bucks, Chester, Delaware, and Montgomery. Bucks County has a majority of republicans registered as voters than Democrats. It has 206,520 Republicans, 200,767 Democrats, and 65,767 as Independents. At least, Trump can neutralize the 17,000 votes he lost to Joe Biden in Bucks County by losing that county by a small number. In conclusion, Harris has a chance to win big in only five counties. They are again: Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, Philadelphia, and Allegheny.
Imagine this scenario. Trump won York County in 2020 by 58,619 votes representing a percentage of 24.51% increase than Joe Biden. York County has now more Republicans than Democrats registered than what was the case 4 years ago. Hypothetically, if Trump wins York County by a little over 60,000 votes, he can offset his losses in eight counties that went Democratic in 2020.
Nevertheless, the picture for Harris and the Democrats is gloomy in these five counties. Philadelphia may prove not to be the jewel in the crown for the Democratic Party. The Democrats have been winning Philadelphia with a smaller margin. Biden carried Philadelphia with 471, 305 votes and this was less than the figure for Hillary Clinton which was 475,277. Ten percent in the Democratic Party Primaries in Philadelphia wrote other names or were not committed to Biden. This has the potential to hurt Harris on November 5th.
The four other counties of Allegheny, Chester, Delaware and Montgomery could be troublesome for Kamala Harris. The increase in their numbers from 2016 to 2020 was higher than usual. This may have to do with the fact that the increase they had in previous Presidential races was not that high both in figures and percentage wise. This was their margin of victory over Trump four years ago: Allegheny 147,846, Chester 53,807, Delaware 88,070, and Montgomery 134,051. However, in 2016, these were the margins of victory over Trump: Allegheny 108,137, Chester 25,568, Delaware 66,735, and Montgomery 93,351. To make things clearer, these figures should be measured against how Obama won them in 2012. The figures were: Romney won Chester, and Allegheny was 90,648, Delaware was 60,939, and Montgomery was 58,973. This is statistically unfeasible. For example, the increase in the voting percentage in Allegheny County from 2012 to 2016 was 17,489. Yet, the increase in the voting victory for Biden when subtracting the numbers that went to Hillary was 39,709. This was double the increase from 2012 to 2016. Such a statistical trend also applies to the other three counties of Chester, Delaware, and Montgomery.
One explanation was the fact that in the 2020 Presidential Elections, 2.7 million mail ballots were sent. In 2024, only 1.7 million ballots were mailed by Pennsylvania elections’ officials. Accordingly, fewer mail ballots will salvage Trump from losing hugely in the 13 counties he could not win in general and in Allegheny County, and Philadelphia and its suburbs in particular. In fact, mail ballots undermined Trump’s victory in a few of his strongholds. For example, In 2016 he won Cumberland County by almost 21,000 votes. In 2020, he was victorious in that very same county by almost 15,000 votes. Trump lost 7000 votes in a county that is staunchly Republican.
Three other factors will help Trump win in Pennsylvania. While there are 157,228 votes or 16.5% percentage that went to Nikki Haley in the Republican Primaries, and 10,387 votes or 1.2% were write-in ballots, Kamala Harris is also vulnerable among the Democrats. In 2024, 66,310 went to Dean Phillips and this was 6.5% and there were 55,611 or 5.3% which were write-in votes. In 2020, both Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard got substantial votes in the Democratic Party Primaries. This shows that Biden and tacitly Kamala Harris have no mandate over the Democratic Party voters in the Keystone State.
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania on Monday, October 21, published the final voters’ registration statistics. The total number of people registered is a figure of 9,088,583. There are 3,971,607 Democrats, 3,674,783 Republicans, 1,096,427 Independents, and 346,766 who belong to different political parties. This is a vast improvement for President Trump and the Republican Party. According to NBC News, “In March 2021, registered Democrats outnumbered Republicans in Pennsylvania by 630,000. On the eve of the 2024 election, that edge has been cut to 300,000.”
According to Pennsylvania’s Department of State, in the year 2020, 6,915,283 voters cast their ballots in the state. This was a percentage of 76.07% out of a total population of 9,090,962 registered voters. This means that with a population decline, with the number of voters in the Commonwealth staying almost equal to what it used to be four years ago, with the increase in the number of Independent and Republican voters, that the chances of Trump winning Pennsylvania’s nineteen electoral college votes will be higher. In 2016, President Trump received 2,970,742 votes or 48.17% of the total vote compared to Senator Hillary Clinton who got 2,926,458 votes representing 47.45% of the total vote of 6,166, 938 ballots. Other figures were 146,719 for the Libertarian Party’s Gary Johnson, which was 2.38% of the vote, 49,941 for the Green Party’s Jill Stein or 0.81% of the vote, and Darrell Castle of the Constitution Party scored 21,572 votes or 0.35% of the total votes. Other parties, candidates, and write-in ballots were a figure of 51,506 standing at a ratio of 0.83%. The final outcome was Trump winning Pennsylvania by 44,284 votes and by a percentage of 0.72%. In 2016, these were the registered voters’ numbers: 4,217,456 Democrats, 3,301,182 Republicans, and 1,204,339 Independents and other parties out of 8,722,877 voters.
If Donald Trump was able to eke out a hard-fought victory when his party was short in registration by more than 900,000 votes than the Democratic Party, this promises that he can win Pennsylvania with whatever margin when the Republican Party has obliterated significantly the big registration majority that the Democrats had. In 2020, President Biden had 3,461,221 votes or 49.87% of the size of the votes, President Trump had 3,379,055 votes constituting 48.69% of the vote and Jo Jorgensen the Libertarian candidate had 79,445 votes making up 1.14% of the votes, while other parties, candidates, and write-in ballots were a figure of 20,728 standing at a ratio of 0.30%. Biden won the elections by 82,166 votes or 1.18% parentage out of a total number of 6,940,449 votes.
In all the counties he won in 2020, Trump increased his margin of victory over his Democratic rival compared to what he did in 2016 except by very good percentages, except for the counties of Berks, Lancaster, Luzerne, Montour, Pike and York. Despite, he maintained a huge lead over Biden in these counties and his margin of victory’s losses were very little. Finally, if Kamala Harris has a winning victory of 700,000 votes in the five strongholds of Allegheny, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery and Philadelphia, Trump’s winning by an average margin of victory of 15,000 votes in 53 counties, he can secure for himself a decent six-digit figure of electoral triumph and political success in PA.
Nabil (Bill) S. Mikhail [mikhailaddress@gmail.com] was educated at the American University in Cairo. He received an MA in international relations from the School of International Service at American University, Washington, DC. He pursued graduate studies at Georgetown University, held two internships at the Center for Strategic and international studies (CSIS) and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, DC. Dr. Mikhail obtained a Ph.D in foreign affairs from the University of Virginia. He was a post-doctoral fellow with the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He teaches currently in the University of Maryland System, and George Washington University, Washington, DC. He provides news commentaries to such stations in the Middle East as TV Kuwait, Al Ekhbariyah Saudi Arabia, and Al Hurra, and BBC Arabic. Currently, he is researching America’s foreign policy in Iraq and Afghanistan, and democracy in the Arab world. His book on Democracy has just been published in Arabic and is contributing to the debate over the Arab Spring. He has published articles in Foreign Affairs, SAIS Review, and National Security Studies Quarterly, Journal of Church and State, and others.
