The Keystone State Is Key

In yesterday’s primary Biden delivered and put up big numbers, but Trump looked weaker and vulnerable

Joe Biden campaigning in Pennsylvania, Photo courtesy of CNBC

If you live outside of Pennsylvania, you might not have heard about yesterday’s presidential primary. But the results are quite interesting.

Pennsylvania is a swingy, purple state. Hillary Clinton lost it to Donald Trump in 2016 by 44,292 votes, less than 1 percent. Trump then lost it to Joe Biden in 2020 by 81,669 votes, or slightly more than 1 percent. 

In 2024, the presumptive presidential candidates both faced primary challengers—Dean Phillips and Nikki Haley—who have long since dropped out. The election yesterday was really about voter enthusiasm and which candidate could keep more of his party unified and not lodging protest votes.

The results were welcome news for Biden but carried further warning signs for Trump. In today’s piece, I’ll dive into the numbers a bit, showing how the Biden campaign performed far better than the Trump camp at maintaining base loyalty and turning out voters. I’ll also look at the critical suburban districts around Philadelphia to see how those shaped up. Finally, I’ll compare these results to other primary results in key battleground states to see if we can discern any patterns. Spoiler alert: We certainly can!

The top-line results, by the numbers

With nearly all ballots counted, Biden is leading with 93 percent of the vote, with around 7 percent for challenger Dean Phillips. 

This is an important victory for the President, who has invested heavily in Pennsylvania already, focusing especially on the threat Trump poses to democracy. It bears noting that Biden faced an organized protest vote, centered around U.S. policy toward Israel and Gaza, called “Abandon Biden.” But that effort failed to deliver numbers significant enough to dent Biden’s commanding win.

By comparison, Trump fared more poorly in Pennsylvania despite campaigning there recently. He won 83.5 percent of the vote—nearly ten percent less than Biden—with 16.5 percent voting for Nikki Haley. That’s a bit more than 1 in 7 GOP primary voters casting a protest vote against Trump.

Haley received nearly 156K votes, despite having dropped out of the race in early March. The numbers show lingering doubts over Trump among Republican voters in Pennsylvania. 

But couldn’t a big number of these voters for Haley be Democrats or independents meddling in the GOP primary to make Trump look bad? 

Not in Pennsylvania. The state has a closed primary, meaning only registered members of the party can participate in it. Looking at that number—155,829 registered GOP voters casting what amounts to a protest vote—the Trump Campaign has got to be concerned, especially since they know they have to somehow find 81,670 new Trump voters since 2020 to come back and beat Joe Biden there.

Biden is winning on enthusiasm

On turnout, Biden put up some impressive numbers, especially for an incumbent with no significant opposition. With over 920,000 votes tabulated in his column, he smashed the turnout totals of the last two Democratic presidential incumbents, Barack Obama in 2012 and Bill Clinton in 1996:

Obama Vote 2012 Total: 616,102

Clinton Vote 1996 Total: 666,486

(The population of Pennsylvania did not grow by nearly the same percentage in this time, rising from 12.1 million in 1996 to around 12.9 million today.)

Trump only received around 786,000 votes from his party’s electorate yesterday, and overall GOP turnout was 46,000 lower than Democratic turnout. Both sides had important contested House primaries, so it doesn’t appear that either side had any less reason to turn out to vote.

Trump is looking weak in the PA suburbs

Whenever vote counts come in, especially in the swing states, I skim the top line figures but then go straight for the breakdowns in those swingy, suburban counties outside of the major cities. For Pennsylvania, it’s the counties outside Philly that matter the most. It’s places like these where the 2024 election will be won or lost.

The good news is, Trump was weakest in those suburban counties yesterday, which are must-wins for his campaign, sometimes losing one in four GOP voters. The pink column is the percent of votes Trump received; the white column is Haley’s percentage in these counties in PA:

These are disastrous numbers for Trump if they hold true in November. Suburban women in particular came out strongly against Trump in 2020 after going for him in 2016. If Trump can’t win those voters back, he will have a steep uphill climb to make up the difference elsewhere.

The battleground blues

Trump’s poor showing among Haley voters in Pennsylvania is part of a larger national problem for Trump. This manifests and matters most in the battleground states. So let’s review three recent results.

In Michigan, when Haley was still in the race, she pulled in 26.6 percent of the GOP primary votes. That was one of the biggest warning signs for Trump to course correct and woo her voters, which as I’ll discuss below he has pretty much refused to do.

In Wisconsin, Trump lost around 21 percent of the vote, while Biden saw just 8.3 percent register their protest. Haley, who had dropped out well before that primary, still drew more than 12 percent, or 76,000 votes. This is in a state that Biden won by just over 20,000 votes against Trump in 2020.

In Arizona, Haley won 18 percent of the Republican primary vote, around the same as Wisconsin and now Pennsylvania. By contrast, Democratic protest voters in Arizona were encouraged to pick Marianne Williamson instead of Biden. She wound up with just 3.8 percent of the vote there.

But Trump will bring those voters home, right?

Republican apathy over Trump could reduce turnout from these crucial Haley voters. “The risk for Donald Trump would be that people would not vote because they’re not happy,” said Pennsylvania resident Irma Fralic, who is a co-chair of Women for Nikki. “I think I speak for many people in that we’re extremely frustrated that we have Biden and Trump to pick from.”

It will be critical for Trump to convince many of the Haley voters that they should come back to the GOP fold. And certainly, judging from history, many still will.

But if Trump can’t bring the vast majority of these Haley voters home and turn them out to vote by November, states like Pennsylvania will likely slip out of his grasp. That’s why it’s rather bizarre that he keeps openly saying that he doesn’t want or need the Haley voters. As the New York Times reported,

In January, Mr. Trump threatened that donors who gave to Ms. Haley would be “permanently barred from the MAGA camp.” The result was one of Ms. Haley’s strongest fund-raising days.

And after Super Tuesday, the Trump Campaign even gloated about his domination over Haley, with campaign chair Chris LaCivita posting an image of “Apocalypse Now.” Far from a welcoming hand.

After Trump beat Haley in South Carolina, he declared she had been “trounced” and even dared her to stay in the race to be further humiliated. 

Haley had stated, after conceding, that Trump would have to earn her voters’ support, and so far he has not taken her up on that. And that is showing up in these numbers in a big way.

The bottom line? Trump still has a big Haley problem, especially in the swing states and especially in those suburban counties, and there’s no indication he is doing anything to fix it.