Could Pennsylvania Become the Next Ohio?

Supporters gather at a campaign rally for Republican presidential nominee, former U.S. President Donald Trump, at the Butler Farm Show Grounds on October 5, 2024 in Butler, Pennsylvania.

For decades, few adages in American electoral politics have proven as enduring and prolific as the saying, “As goes Ohio, so goes the nation.”

With the lone exception of 2020, for every presidential election cycle since 1980, the winner of the presidential contest in Ohio has ascended to the Oval Office, signaling the centrality of the state to our nation’s political and electoral landscape.

Over the last eight years, however, the Buckeye State has gone from a presidential bellwether to a ruby red stronghold. Donald Trump won there three consecutive times, this year increasing his margin of victory to 11 points – a margin not seen since George H.W. Bush’s 55 percent to 44 percent victory in 1988.

Now, Pennsylvania has seemingly taken Ohio’s place as the perennial battleground state. But following the November 5 election, there are a growing number of signs suggesting that the Keystone State could soon join Ohio in the solidly red column—perhaps indicating a monumental electoral shift that could dramatically tilt the scales in favor of Republicans in future elections.

For every presidential election from 1992 to 2012, Democrats carried the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania with relative ease. But the left’s grip on the Keystone State was suddenly broken in 2016, when Donald Trump won there over Hillary Clinton by less than one point.

2020 seemed to signal a return to normalcy as Joe Biden retook Pennsylvania – albeit with widespread concerns about election irregularities. In 2024, the state was widely viewed by both sides as the most important battleground, as it would deliver 19 Electoral Votes. Trump ultimately won there by nearly two points, becoming the first Republican since Ronald Reagan to win the state twice.

In the wake of Trump’s historic comeback victory, Democrats are reportedly fretting that Pennsylvania could now be out of their reach for the foreseeable future—and for good reason.

According to the Associated Press, Kamala Harris’s defeat in the Keystone State has “sowed doubts about whether Pennsylvania might be leaving the ranks of up-for-grabs swing states for a right-leaning existence more like Ohio’s.”

Conventional wisdom holds that GOP gains in the state can be credited to the diminishing political influence of Philadelphia, which is shrinking in population and has experienced a steady trend of lower Election Day turnout for years. Combined with increased turnout in conservative rural counties, Democrats have ample reason for concern.

Although Philadelphia has historically been “a driver of Democratic victories statewide,” Kamala Harris’s margin in the city “was the smallest of any Democratic presidential nominee since John Kerry’s in 2004, and turnout there was well below the statewide average,” the Associated Press reported.

Meanwhile, Democrats now have their “narrowest voter registration edge in at least a half-century. What was an advantage of 1.2 million voters in 2008… is now a gap of fewer than 300,000.”

Republican gains can also be in part attributed to “Democrats switching their registration to Republican, a third party or independent, as well as more inactive Democratic voters being removed from registration rolls.”

In Pennsylvania and elsewhere, young voters and ethnic minorities have also fled the ranks of the Democrat Party in droves, further accelerating the trend towards Trump and the GOP.

Democrats’ struggles in Pennsylvania this year weren’t limited to the top of the ticket, either. Republican Senate nominee David McCormick also unseated three-term incumbent Democrat Senator Bob Casey, and Republicans defeated Democrats in three other statewide races and in two congressional races.

For Democrat hopefuls in the Keystone State like Governor Josh Shapiro, who is widely speculated to emerge as a contender for the Democrat presidential nomination in 2028, these facts paint a decidedly grim picture. “Democrats hadn’t lost Pennsylvania’s electoral votes and a Senate incumbent in the same year since 1880,” the AP noted.

Like Ohio, much of Pennsylvania’s electorate is comprised of working-class voters who have grown increasingly alienated by Democrats’ elitism and far-left policies. Prior to the rise of Donald Trump on the national political scene nearly a decade ago, these voters were politically homeless—alienated by the growing cultural extremism of the progressive left yet overlooked by the Republican Party establishment.

But thanks to the ascendancy of Donald Trump and the emergence of the MAGA movement, all of that began to change.

Rust Belt states that had traditionally been shoo-ins for Democrats began tilting red. As a result, Ohio and Iowa are now safely in the Republican column. The former Democrat sanctuaries of Wisconsin and Michigan have now achieved the status of battlegrounds. And now, it appears that Pennsylvania could go the way of Ohio—a development that could irreversibly shatter the so-called “blue wall” and cement the Rust Belt as a Republican safe haven.

Aaron Flanigan is the pen name of a writer in Washington, D.C.