Philadelphia suburbs become targets of the Trump-Harris campaign

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With Vice President Kamala Harris planning to campaign in Bucks County on Wednesday and former President Donald Trump visiting a town hall in Montgomery County earlier this week, Philadelphia’s suburbs are in high demand in the final weeks of the 2024 presidential election.

In Pennsylvania, the nation’s largest swing state with 19 Electoral College votes, campaigning in the commonwealth is likely to increase as Nov. 5 approaches and absentee ballots are mailed.

Both Harris and Trump may have a particular focus on Bucks and Montgomery counties in the coming weeks.

Here are some reasons.

A lot of votes are cast in Bucks and Montgomery counties

In both of the last two presidential elections, Montgomery and Bucks counties combined returned more ballots than Philadelphia, accounting for 10% of the 6.1 million votes counted in 2020 and 11.5% of the 6.1 million votes counted in 2020.

In Bucks County, approximately 345,042 votes were counted in 2016, with Hillary Clinton winning that race 48.4% to Trump’s 47.6%, and in 2020, 396,234 votes were counted, with President Joe Biden having a four-point lead over Trump with a result of 51.6%.

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Montgomery County had a stronger lead for both recent Democratic candidates: Biden won nearly 63% of the 510,157 votes and Clinton won 37% of the 438,652 votes counted in 2016. Trump lost Montgomery County by more than 20 points in both years.

Trump won Pennsylvania in 2016 by almost the same margin that Clinton won Bucks County, and Biden won Pennsylvania in 2020 by a margin of 1.16%.

Republicans gain advantage in Bucks County

Bucks County is a target of both campaigns because it is not only the purplest county in Philadelphia in terms of past election results, but also in terms of voter registration.

According to Pennsylvania Department of State voter data updated Oct. 7, Philadelphia’s suburban counties total just over 3 million, or about 21% of Pennsylvania’s nearly 9 million registered voters.

Unlike Chester, Delaware and Montgomery counties, Bucks County is the only Philadelphia suburb where Republicans outnumber Democrats, albeit by a very narrow margin of less than a percentage point of difference between them.

Of the 486,740 voters in Bucks County, Republicans make up about 41.6% of voters and Democrats make up about 41% of voters. In July, Democrats lost their electoral advantage over the GOP for the first time in at least a decade.

This makes Bucks County one of the most divided counties in Pennsylvania, alongside the 0.46% Republican advantage over Democrats in Luzerne County.

Pennsylvania’s suburbs may be less safe for Democrats

Most of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties are more red than blue, with Republicans leading Democrats by an average of about 30 points in 55 counties.

Democrats lead in just a dozen counties with an average of just over 14%, which includes Philadelphia, neighboring counties except Bucks, and Allegheny, Center, Erie, Dauphin, Lackawanna, Lehigh, Monroe and Northampton counties.

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The party does not dictate how people vote, but the 2020 election result closely resembles the vote differential between the two major parties by district.

Trump won by an average margin of nearly 39 points in almost all GOP-leaning counties, while Biden won 12 counties in 2020 by an average margin of about 15 points – almost all of those counties Biden won now also lead relative to registered Democrats.

Harris’ campaign told NBC News on Monday that the Democratic candidate would focus on suburban Pennsylvania, an area the campaign called “our own mini ‘blue wall'” ahead of a campaign event in Erie County.

Over the years, Trump has made Bucks County a recurring campaign target and almost came to Bucks County in September before canceling a visit to Our Lady of Czestochowa in Doylestown.

Chris Ullery is the Philadelphia Hub data reporter for the USA Today Network. Contact him at [email protected] or find him on Twitter at @ulleryatinell.