Upstate New York was Predictable Trump Country. I knew he was going to win New York, but he did well beyond what I expected. Upstate New York is in worse shape than Pennsylvania in a lot of ways, but I expect Trump will do well here. He does very well with working class people suffering under the blue state model, and Upstate New York fits that bill for sure. The article explains why Pennsylvania will be less receptive to Trump:
But it’s also true that some of these places might yet be resurrected. In fact, some of them already have been. Two hours southeast of Binghamton, across the state line, is Williamsport, Pa., a town that was shrinking for fifty years but is now the seventh fastest-growing metro region in the country. It’s unemployment rate is below the national average and future job growth there is estimated to be more than 41 percent over the next decade.
The difference between Binghamton and Williamsport is that New York banned fracking and Pennsylvania welcomed it.
Because New York is controlled politically by New York City, whose residents couldn’t care less about the plight of working class stiffs. Pennsylvania can still outvote it’s large cities, though with coal country in the southwest clearing out population wise, I fear for the future. There are a lot of parts of this state that are in just as bad shape as Upstate New York, and I expect Trump will do very well in these places on Tuesday. Those folks don’t want to hear about what you’ll do to reinvigorate small business, or listen to you talk about how much you love Jesus, or listen to politicians opine about who gets to use what bathroom. They want to know how you’re going to make their lives better, and Republicans better have an answer to that if they don’t want to head the way of the Whigs.
But it goes without saying that until 2008, southwestern PA hadn’t voted Republican since Nixon. I have a feeling social beliefs tend to be outranked by livelihood (i.e union jobs) when many step in that booth.
Why I think Trump is going to do very well in southwestern PA, even in a general election, is he’s the first Republican in a while that is actually talking about the trade deals that decimated the jobs in the area. He may not suck up to the unions like Hillary will but it should resonate with many who realize it hasn’t gotten them anywhere.
In other news Trump got 70% of the vote in my home county in NY. Rural upstate? Nope, suburban NYC communities.
I’ve often pondered this, wondering how things could be made more fair for the rural areas of each state. The Founders did a bit of work in this direction, realizing that high-population states would have more influence in the House of Representatives than was fair, thus we have a Senate in which each state only has two votes. Same with the concept of the Electoral College, which ensures that small-population states aren’t totally ignored in presidential elections.
Possibly the same could be done in individual states, although it would require amending state constitutions, which the mega-cities would oppose: require that statewide legislative initiatives be voted on a one-vote-per-county basis, rather than simply population majority. Voters would still vote, but only to capture the county vote, the results of each county decision to be entered as a single vote in the state-wide tally. Thus the urban counties could not overwhelm the rural counties with simple numbers. Presumably something could be done with the US Constitution to limit the power of the major cities.
It would require reversing a SCOTUS decision. Sebastian has the details – I’d have to look them up
Gray v. Sanders and Reynolds v. Simms. In my opinion the courts should have allowed geographic representation based on historically recognized boundaries, such as counties. Though, I do think the federal courts can have jurisdiction when setting districts is clearly racially motivated.
Past election results show that the middle T can’t out vote Philly and Allegheny County. The margin of victory for Democrats in Philly is so massive that the hurdle to overcome that deficit is getting higher and higher. The real problem is that there just aren’t that many people out in the T to make a difference and the ones out there tend to vote 55-45 for Republicans. Unless Republicans manage to increase that T split to 70-30 or democrats in Philly sit out this cycle I don’t know that Pa is in play.
But, who knows. A lot changes in 6 months.