The Liberty Bell may toll for Joe Biden in 2024
On Tuesday, Pennsylvania held its 2024 Democratic and Republican presidential primaries. While President Joe Biden and Donald Trump each won their respective party’s primary as expected, more warning signs popped up for Trump. Specifically, while President Biden won the Democratic primary with over 88 percent of the vote and over 926,000 votes cast, Trump had just over 83 percent of the vote and only 789,000 total votes.
This Trump deficit is significant because Pennsylvania is one of a small number of “battleground” states that will likely determine the 2024 presidential election. As the Pennsylvania publication York Daily Record explains:
Pennsylvania has a long history of being consequential in presidential elections — choosing 20 of the last 25 presidents.
With 20 electoral votes up for grabs, it is considered by some analysts as the most important state in the 2020 presidential election.
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‘Campaigns know if their messaging works here, it can probably work nationally,’ said Jesse White, a political strategist at Perpetual Fortitude, a Democratic consulting and digital management firm. ‘To be able to come in here as a national campaign and have the resources and messaging to effectively win a state as diverse as Pennsylvania is real work.’
Indeed, while Pennsylvania is not a perfect historical bellwether for the presidential election outcome, no Democratic nominee has won the presidency without winning Pennsylvania since Harry Truman did so in 1948. Thus, in all likelihood, President Biden must win Pennsylvania to defeat Donald Trump in November.
In that regard, Tuesday’s election results should be a favorable sign for President Biden and the Democrats. In particular, Biden beat Trump not only in voting percentage, but also in party voter turnout, by more than 137,000 votes. Furthermore, Nimrata “Nikki” Haley, who dropped out of the Republican presidential race early last month, gained 16.4 percent of the Republican vote percentage, with well over 156,000 votes, in Pennsylvania on Tuesday. These healthy vote totals for Haley continue a steady trend for her in the GOP primaries, even after she left the race. This continued “protest” vote for Haley can be read as a warning sign for Trump that many Republican voters are dissatisfied with him. Democrats should not be shy about mentioning this in public, on social media, etc. While it would be nice for Democrats if such unhappy GOP voters flip to President Biden, it may be enough that some of these Republicans simply don’t vote for president at all this year.
Photo by Phil Roeder, used under Creative Commons license. https://is.gd/vnuAgT
