How big were Democratic gains in Pennsylvania this year? Big
At the Almanac Substack, we’ve already looked at Democratic gains in Virginia, New Jersey, California and Georgia. But we shouldn’t leave out Pennsylvania, a swing state where Democrats not only retained three vulnerable supreme court justices in retention elections but did so by comfortable margins—while also flipping a wide range of downballot offices, all amid high turnout and high spending for an off-off-year election.
First, the supreme court race.
In many presidentially competitive counties, the “yes” vote to retain Democratic justices Christine Donohue, Kevin Dougherty, and David Wecht exceeded Kamala Harris’ 2024 vote share by double digits. The justices were retained in such 2024 Trump-won counties as Bucks, Cumberland, Erie, Lancaster, Luzerne, Northampton and York.
The “yes” vote gained similar ground even in solidly Republican areas, such as several counties in southwestern Pennsylvania that I have been tracking since 2006. One of the six counties is solidly blue (Pittsburgh’s Allegheny County) but the other five have become increasingly red: Beaver, Fayette, Greene, Washington and Westmoreland.
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