Season 2, Episode 9: Why Pennsylvania is the Swingiest of Swing States

The Odd Years

It's hard to overstate just how important Pennsylvania plays in deciding the Electoral College winner. If Kamala Harris loses the state, she'd need to win North Carolina or Georgia, as well as Nevada and the remaining blue wall states of Wisconsin and Michigan. If Trump were to lose Pennsylvania, he'd need to pick off at least one of those other Midwestern swing states - Michigan or Wisconsin - and would need to win Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, as well as North Carolina.

Right now, polling suggests the outcome in Pennsylvania is on a knife's edge, which isn't surprising given that President Biden carried the state by just about 80,000 votes in 2020 and in 2016, Trump won the state by just over 68,000 votes.

So what makes Pennsylvania the swingiest of swing states? Way back in the 1980s, Democratic strategist James Carville dubbed the state Philadelphia on one side, Pittsburgh on the other, and Alabama in the middle. But our guests today, Philadelphia Inquirer reporters Julia Terruso and Aseem Shukla, recently took a detailed look at voting patterns in the state and identified five distinct places that are critical to a candidate's success there. Julia Terruso covers politics and our divided electorate for the Inquirer. And up until recently, Aseem Shukla was a data reporter for the Inquirer. You can now find him at the San Francisco Chronicle.

Please check out their really fantastic interactive piece, The Five Kind of Places That Win you Pennsylvania.