Delaware County, Pennsylvania — The path to the White House for Joe Biden could run through the suburbs of Philadelphia.
While there’s little doubt that the former vice president will win the liberal suburbs of Bucks, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, and Philadelphia counties, the question is: Will Biden’s lead in those five counties be enough to carry him to the Keystone Stone’s 20 Electoral College votes?
President Trump, after all, in his 2016 upset victory over Hillary Clinton, picked up large swaths of voters in rural Pennsylvania that had voted Democratic for decades. That shifted the longtime political equation in Pennsylvania that Republican support outside of the big cities would be offset by overwhelming Democratic turnout in Philadelphia and, to a lesser extent, Pittsburgh.
Delaware County voters who turned out to the polls more than a week before Election Day think they’ll make the difference for Biden in Pennsylvania, a state that both campaigns consider crucial to their White House hopes.
Several voters cited the urgency they’ve seen in their own community as the reason why Biden will win.
Patty, a registered nurse who blamed Trump for her hospital’s slow reaction to the coronavirus, told the Washington Examiner on Wednesday morning: “I want this animal out of the White House. I am so sickened by everything he’s done.” She added that there’s “most definitely” a stronger fervor to vote than in previous elections.
“I’ve been voting since I was 18 years old, and I’ve never had such a passion for voting, and I voted every single” election, she added. “People are just disgusted with the unfairness about everything. There’s a blatant disregard for life in general. People want to see their needs met. They want to hear their voices heard.”
Another voter, Bill, said he thinks the “state of the nation is in bad shape and I do not agree with the direction it’s going in,” and he wants “change.” Bill also specifically mentioned that he lost a relative to COVID-19.
Four years ago, Hillary Clinton overwhelmingly won the five Democratic strongholds that surround the City of Brotherly Love by more than 663,000 votes, and yet, Trump still won the state by about 44,000 votes. That means he won the remaining 62 Pennsylvania counties by more than 700,000 votes, according to election data from the New York Times.
While Patty and others have turned out to vote in-person ahead of Election Day, there hasn’t been any reporting released about the number of people who have done so. But more than 1.1 million people from the five counties have requested a mail-in ballot, and more than 335,000 of them have already been returned more than two weeks before the deadline, which extends to Nov. 6 following a Supreme Court ruling, according to data from the United States Elections Project.
Additionally, the 1.1 million people who have requested a mail-in ballot, should they all return them, would account for more than half of the number of people who voted in those areas in 2016, where just under 2 million people voted.
Stacy, a millennial who noted that young voters generally don’t turn out in large numbers, said she thinks that will change this year.
“College kids, normal college kids,” she said. “We don’t tend to vote, but this year we’re all for getting our voices heard. ‘Cause we’ve seen a lot of crap going on and we’re sick and tired of it. We’re ready to put our voices in and let it be heard that we can no longer just keep silent and allow certain things to go on.”
“I think the main reason why the younger generation, she tend not to vote is because they feel like their voices don’t doesn’t really count or, you know, it’s just some, um, you know, one vote won’t kill them or whatever. One vote isn’t that important, but you’d be surprised that one vote does matter,” Stacy added.
[Related: Biden counts Pennsylvania as second home, but voters there aren’t sold on him]
Dick Bingham, the chairman of the Chester County Democratic Committee, also told the Washington Examiner in a phone interview that “enthusiasm is extremely high in Chester County” and the surrounding areas. He also specifically said that on an anecdotal level, voter engagement is “certainly at a much higher level than they were in 2016.”
Bingham further pointed to the increase in voter registration within the county as a source of optimism. In 2016, 8.7 million Pennsylvanians were registered to vote, and 61% of the voting-age population voted, according to Pennsylvania’s Department of State website. As of Monday, more than 9 million people are registered to vote this time around.
Between the five counties, Democrats have 872,000 more registered voters than the Republicans, with a small margin of that coming from Chester County. Democrats were outnumbered during the last presidential election in voter registration, even though Clinton overwhelmingly won the county. Bingham said he’d be “disappointed” if Biden doesn’t carry Chester County in particular by 50,000 votes.
