Pennsylvania is now a GOP stronghold

Matthew Kaminski:
Pennsylvanians have no problem voting Republican. Out of 67 counties, 52 are in GOP hands. So are 12 of 19 congressional districts, both houses of the state legislature and the governor's mansion. Republican Pat Toomey won a Senate seat in 2010.

As party hacks know, the trouble for the GOP here is at the top of the ticket. The state last turned red in a presidential race 24 years ago for George H.W. Bush. His son made it a priority in 2004 and lost by 2.5%. Barack Obama's 10-point win in 2008 was supposed to take it out of the swing column this year.

Yet one of the surprises of the past month is a quietly competitive race for Pennsylvania's 20 electoral votes. Since the Denver debate on Oct. 3, Mr. Obama's lead has narrowed to 4.7%, according to the RealClearPolitics average of state polls. On Tuesday, the Romney campaign leaked plans to air television ads in Pennsylvania, starting as early as today. The effort joins two pro-Republican Super PACs that on Monday revealed a $3 million-plus last-minute ad blitz, including in the expensive Philadelphia media market.
If Pennsylvania stages a surprise next week, it'll come out of suburban Philadelphia. The four so-called collar counties (Bucks, Chester, Delaware and Montgomery) were once moderate Republican bastions. In the past two decades, the suburbs have gone for Democratic presidential candidates. You can't win without them. Bucks (pop. 626,854) is the bellwether: A mix of educated middle-class, rural and blue-collar communities, it votes both ways in local elections—and always for the presidential winner. 
Do the math. The 2004 Bush campaign sought to limit his deficit in predominantly Democratic Philadelphia and the collar counties to around 400,000 votes. Mr. Bush ended up losing the area by half a million votes, giving the state to John Kerry by 142,000. (Mr. Obama won the area by 681,000 votes, the state by 621,000.) The Romney campaign wants to hold the losses here to at most 425,000 votes and pick up the difference in the rest of the state. Mr. Romney even looks competitive in traditionally Democratic Allegheny County, around Pittsburgh, which hasn't gone Republican for president since 1972. President Obama needs to run up his score in and around Philadelphia. 
Republicans in the collar counties had little reason for enthusiasm before the first debate. The morning after Denver, the party office in Bucks was overrun with people looking for Romney-Ryan lawn signs. The Romney message strategy echoes that of Sen. Toomey and other successful GOP candidates here two years ago: Talk about jobs and debt, appeal to bipartisanship, and avoid the subjects of abortion and religion as much as possible.
...
There is much more.

Polling has been trended toward Romney and the data presented in this piece explains why.  I think the shale gas boom as well as teh coal business in the state has also contributed to support for Romney's energy plan.  Romney's message on teh economy and jobs is consistent with the message of GOP candidates who won statewide in 2010 and this is looking like a 2010 type election with independents supporting Romney.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Washington Post: Some Democrats eye adding more justices to the Supreme Court to change its ideological bent The once-remote idea has gained the attention of liberals angered by the GOP push to remake the federal courts. Probably the easy way to defeat this court-packing scheme is for Trump to propose doing the same thing now.  It would lead to Democrat denunciations and claims that it would be wrong, thereby blowing up any attempt by them in the unfortunate event of Democrats winning a presidential election.
Read more

29 % of companies say they are unlikely to keep insurance after Obamacare

Conn Carroll: A new survey of 368 midsize to large companies found that 29% of them are considering terminating their active employee health care plans when Obamacare is full implemented in 2014. Only 71% of employers surveyed said they did not expect to drop their health coverage, while 20% said they did not know and 9% said they were planning to exit. The latest survey, conducted by Towers Watson, echoes an ealier survey by McKinsey & Co. finding that 30% of private-sector employers were planning to drop their employee health insurance coverage by 2014. When the Congressional Budget Office crunched Obamacare's spending numbers, they estimated that only 7% of employees currently covered by employer-sponsored plans would lose their plans. ... This means the cost of the health care fiasco will be hundreds of billions more than estimated by the CBO and Congressional Democrat. It is also clear that Obama's pledge that you could keep your health care plan if you wanted t
Read more

Bin Laden's concern about Zarqawi's remains

James Robbins: ... Bin Laden suggests that President Bush should allow Zarqawi’s body to be returned to his family in Jordan, but this is a matter that is up to the Jordanian government, which so far has not shown much interest in facilitating a homecoming. Bin Laden mocks King Abdullah II, calling him a Coalition minion, and asking “w hat scares you about Abu Musab after he’s dead? You know that his funeral, if allowed to happen, would be a huge funeral showing the extent of sympathy with the mujahedin.” A large crowd would definitely turn out, though most people would be on hand to demonstrate their anger and disgust. Last November’s hotel bombings in Amman , masterminded by Zarqawi, are still fresh in people’s memory, and mentioning them to Jordanians has the same visceral impact as memory of the 9/11 attacks does here. Jordan has adopted a zero-tolerance policy towards those who choose to mourn the country’s least favorite son, and four opposition members of parliament who paid con
Read more