If there’s any swing state where Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden was supposed to outperform Hillary Clinton, and thus beat President Trump, it’s Pennsylvania.
Biden was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, as he loves telling everyone. In 2008 and 2012, former President Barack Obama sent Biden to campaign in Pennsylvania down the stretch. The theory was that “Blue Collar Joe” would appeal to the working-class vote in Scranton and around Pittsburgh.
Also, unlike some of his more radical primary opponents, Biden should appeal to the upper-middle-class, college-educated, married, white voters, a group that has been trending Democratic over the last decades and might be particularly put off by Trump’s comportment.
Finally, Biden won the Democratic primary on the strength of the black vote, and Clinton’s Pennsylvania loss may have been half due to a low level of black turnout in Philadelphia.
So how is Biden doing in Pennsylvania compared to Clinton? No better, if you believe the latest polls.
On Aug. 31, 2016, Clinton led Trump by 7.6 percentage points, 46.6% to 39.0%, in the RealClearPolitics average of polls. Today, the RealClearPolitics average shows that Biden leads Trump in Pennsylvania by only 4.7 points, 49.0% to 44.3%.
Trump hit his all-time high on job approval in Pennsylvania, with 41% saying he’s doing an excellent or good job in an August Franklin & Marshall College poll. His job approval is roughly in the same place that Obama’s was in 2012. Obama carried the Keystone State in both 2008 and 2012.
There are reasons to believe Biden will outperform Clinton in Pennsylvania, but so far, they’re not moving the top lines of the polls there.
