US election 2020: Biden squeaked a win in Erie county, in lesson for Democrats

A swath of voters in the working-class county of Erie say they still favour conservative positions; just not Donald Trump.

Joe Biden speaks to Union members after touring a plumbers union training centre in Erie, Pennsylvania. Picture: AFP.

President-elect Joe Biden successfully turned out voters in Erie County, Pennsylvania. But a look at his razor-thin margin of victory shows why Democrats struggled across the country to win back the white working-class voters who helped propel Donald Trump to victory four years ago.

Interviews with a swath of voters in the western Pennsylvania county show that many people still favour conservative positions on issues such as taxes, abortion and guns. They find progressive priorities tackling climate change, social justice and defunding the police too far left.

“I’m not totally on board with the liberal approach to economics and social problems,” said Robert Yates, 45, a home-health-care worker who backed Mr Trump four years ago but voted for Mr Biden to “bring back some normalcy and stability.”

In short, these voters say they soured on Trump, the man, rather than Trump policies.

In a race where turnout jumped more than 10 per cent in Erie County, Mr Biden got a 1,424-vote margin of victory out of more than 138,000 votes cast. Overall, registered Democrats outnumber Republicans 99,000 to 75,000.

Voters and local party officials say Democrats inched out Republicans in Erie County because they successfully broadened outreach within their party and enough centrist Republicans rejected what they saw as President Trump’s chaotic governance. Mr Biden visited Erie, stepping up efforts to win over voters that many say Democrat Hillary Clinton took for granted four years ago, when she lost the county by fewer than 2,000 votes.

That suggests Democrats still face challenges in largely white, rural counties where more liberal positions turn off a swath of the electorate.

“There’s more enthusiasm now for conservative values than there’s ever been,” said Jezree Friend, a state Republican Party committeeman and political consultant who lives in Erie and works for the Manufacturer & Business Association.

Mr Friend pointed out that a Republican state senator in the region retained his seat by 20 points, among other down-ballot Republicans in the county and state who won, even as Mr Trump lost.

Donald Trump holds a campaign rally in Erie, Pennsylvania. Picture; Getty Images.

Marlo LaFlamme, 49, of Union City, about 20 miles southeast of the city of Erie, said she backed Mr Trump for his stands on taxes, immigration and protecting the Second Amendment. Ms LaFlamme, who said she helps her husband do plastering work, said she thinks Mr Biden’s proposal to raise taxes on corporations would hurt consumers. “They’re going to raise the prices,” she said, “and it’s going to be right back on us.”

Jim Wertz, chair of the Erie County Democratic Party, said many Democrats in the county supported issues such as racial equality but still were uncomfortable with protests and unrest that took hold this summer. “There’s a lot of moderate Democrats that wish we talked less about those issues,” he said. “People don’t want the chaos.”

The results in Erie suggest few people changed their minds on substantive issues, a pattern that mirrors the national picture. Only 3 per cent of voters who said they had backed Mrs Clinton in the prior election decided to vote for Mr Trump this year, according to a large survey of the 2020 electorate called AP VoteCast. It found 6 per cent of Trump 2016 voters backed Mr Biden.

Nationally, 76 per cent of voters said they knew all along which candidate they would back, leaving less than one-quarter to be influenced by TV ads, the national conventions, news coverage or neighbours, the survey found.

“There’s a big battle over the future that has been deferred,” said Republican strategist Bruce Mehlman, “but it’s still coming.”

Lara Putnam, a University of Pittsburgh history professor who follows local voting trends, said she had expected Mr Trump to draw more voters in blue-collar counties.

“I’m not surprised that Trump was able to come up with more votes, because Republicans have been getting more votes steadily in all these counties for 30 years,” she said. What’s surprising is Democrats matched that surge in rural and working-class counties, she said: “So, where did the Democrats come from?’’

Democrats in Erie say they were determined to avoid the mistakes of 2016, when the county voted for a Republican presidential ticket for the first time since the 1980s. Unlike Mrs Clinton, Mr Biden visited Erie and talked to union members on October 10 at an apprenticeship-training facility for the plumbers union in Summit Township.

Joel Hobson, 33, a journeyman plumber, said the visit helped sway him to vote for the Democrat after he sat out the 2016 election. Mr Hobson said he typically doesn’t pay attention to politics but was impressed by Mr Biden’s support for unions. “That’s my livelihood,” he said. “If I knew he backed us, I was going to back him.”

In another change from 2016, the Biden campaign approached Republicans and Independents who might be persuaded to vote Democratic. According to Democratic activists in Erie, there were no such efforts four years ago.

The Erie Democratic Party sought to make Mr Biden more of a presence even in the county’s redder parts. The party handed out 21,000 Biden signs, compared with a few hundred for Mrs Clinton in 2016; it opened three satellite offices, up from none.

“There are a lot of Democratic votes in rural areas,” said Mr Wertz, the party chairman, an Edinboro University journalism professor, “and it would be foolish for us to ignore that.”

He paid $500 a month for an office in Union City. The owners of eight empty storefronts in the borough of Girard in the county’s western part wouldn’t rent to him, he said: “Nobody would take the money.”

Trump supporters demonstrate outside a vote counting centre in Philadelphia. Picture: AFP.

Mr Wertz also targeted recently nationalised immigrants. After digging through census data and identifying households with unregistered voters, volunteers brought packets to nearly 800 homes.

Many of President Trump’s most energetic supporters in Erie County acted on their own, organising Trump trains with horns honking and flags flying. In Union City, after the Biden campaign office opened, two local businessmen opened their own unofficial campaign office on the same side of the street.

A former corrections officer, Mr Shank, who considers himself a diehard Trump supporter, said he understood the president turned off some voters.

“Do I agree with everything President Trump says? Absolutely not,” he said. “I wish I could call him and say, Hey, could you put the Twitter down today? We got your back.”

Like others, Gary Horton, president of the local NAACP chapter, credits Democrats with running a more robust campaign this year but said Democrats face challenges next time. Given the more conservative-leaning views in the county and across the state, he said, he doubted if anyone other than Mr Biden who sought the Democratic nomination could have won Pennsylvania.

“It’s hard not to see after the fact, just looking back,” he said, “that he was the best choice.”

The Wall St Journal