US election 2020: Joe Biden could see his home town flip Republican and vote Trump
Residents in the small town of Scranton in Pennsylvania are refusing to say if they will vote for favourite son Joe Biden - which could bode well for Donald Trump.
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You would almost never know it if you were not paying attention, but the small city of Scranton, population 77,000 people in the north-east corner of Pennsylvania is rapidly becoming ground zero for the 2020 election.
Democrat candidate Joe Biden’s childhood home, Scranton – perhaps best known to Australians as the fictional headquarters of the Dunder-Mifflin Paper Co. in the American version of The Office – is now very much in play.
On Monday (US time), on the eve of the election, Donald Trump will come to town and hold a “Make America Great Again” rally at nearby Wilkes-Barre/Scranton International Airport.
Not to be outdone, the Democrats are sending running mate Kamala Harris to town for a rally at a thus far undisclosed location the same day.
You cannot turn on a television here without seeing a pro-Biden ad promising to end the pandemic without shutting down the economy, or an ad by a Trump-supporting group slamming the left’s candidate for sending jobs overseas to China while in the Senate and as vice-president in Barack Obama’s administration – ending with a picture of the Democrat shaking hands obsequiously with Xi Jinping.
And on a grass verge where drivers can turn off the highway into the local Dickson City shopping plaza, a group of Japanese for Trump stood screaming themselves hoarse chanting “We love Trump! Four more years!”, while holding up Trump-Pence and MAGA signs and waving a flag showing the president done up as Rambo with a grenade launcher and the slogan, “TRUMP: No Man, No Woman, No Commie Can Stump Him.”
When asked where they come from, their leader smiled broadly and laughed: “From Japan!”, before launching back into his chant.
But other than the Japanese for Trump contingent, virtually no one The Daily Telegraph speaks to is willing to tip their hand.
At Scranton’s Little Slice of Heaven pizza joint, the owner is keen to tell us he has been in business fourteen years on the day, but absolutely refuses to give an answer as to his politics – “half the country will be happy, half the country will be unhappy” is all he will say.
Calls to local businesses, bars, and bowling alleys by a visiting Australian news crew asking to come in and chat to patrons are met with unfailingly polite but firm refusals.
While there are a not inconsiderable number of Trump-Pence signs, the biggest support we see for the president comes in the cars driving past the Tokyo Trumpers.
Driver after driver honked their horn, passengers were seen giving enthusiastic thumbs-up signs, and only a dissenter or two flipped the bird or rolled down their window to shout, “grab ‘em by the p*ssy”.
At a scenic lookout, built in 1938 by FDR’s Depression-era Works Progress Administration job creation program, The Daily Telegraph was able to take in the view over the valley where Scranton sits amidst trees turning all the colours of autumn, drivers politely shook their head no when asked for an interview – though one pulled up and pointed to his “Trump-Pence” mask before driving on.
It may just be fatigue: Countless news crews from around the world have descended on Scranton trying to bring home some nugget of gold.
But it is also not surprising that in an America that has seen stores and businesses torched by rioters during the George Floyd protests, diners harassed in restaurants for not raising a fist for Black Lives Matter or even just being white, and according to the New York Post, threatening anonymous letters posted to homes with Trump signs out the front, people are not talking to pollsters – or journalists.
No wonder that Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute, told Politico.com that the number of nil responses had “ticked up” this year.
This is the “shy Trump” effect that made not only 2016 but also Brexit and the Morrison election such surprises.
It is also why both campaigns are so nervous.
In 2016, Pennsylvania and its 20 electoral votes tipped barely into the Trump column, and Democrats are determined that this doesn’t happen again.
In 2020, already more than 2.1 million early ballots have been returned, and 68 per cent of these have been from registered Democrats.
At the same time, outside Pennsylvania’s cities, The Daily Telegraph heard increasing concern about Joe Biden’s plans to phase out fossil fuels and ban fracking.
David Taylor, president and CEO of the Pennsylvania Manufacturers association, told The Daily Telegraph that if Pennsylvania and its neighbouring states of Ohio and West Virginia were an independent nation, thanks to fracking, “we would be the third largest natural gas producer on earth”.
Taylor said that unlike Australia, where the Crown holds the rights to resources under the land, “in America, farmers and landholders have done well” from royalties and access rights, meaning that it is not just the direct jobs in the industry that are under threat.
Meanwhile, nationally, there are increasing concerns amongst Democrats that throwing so much time and money at Pennsylvania has hurt not just efforts in states like Arizona and Texas, but with minorities as well.
On Saturday (local time) Democrat voting data firm Catalist showed that in Arizona, two-third of registered Latinos had not yet voted, in Florida proportionally fewer minority voters had already voted, and in Pennsylvania, despite high overall numbers, 75 per cent of registered black voters had not yet voted.
Democrats have traditionally counted on minority group support, and a number of senior party officials were quoted off the record by Bloomberg as being unhappy with the party’s outreach efforts this year.
As one political observer told The Daily Telegraph, “these leaks usually happen after you lose”.
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Originally published as US election 2020: Joe Biden could see his home town flip Republican and vote Trump