HARRISBURG, Pa. — Pennsylvania has long been a key battleground state and has played a big role in the outcome of the last few presidential elections. Both major party presidential campaigns are expected to focus on the Commonwealth throughout the summer and into the fall.
Recent polling shows a portion of the voters are unsatisfied with either of the major party presidential candidates. That was backed up in Tuesday's primary by both the ballots cast for candidates and the number of write-in votes.
"The dissatisfaction with both candidates is going to be deeply problematic for everybody," said Dr. Alison Dagnes, chair of the Department of Political Science at Shippensburg University. "It’s not just at the top of the ticket that voter turnout is going to impact the outcome of these races in November, it’s also down ballot."
Let’s start with the results on the Democratic side, which saw about a 50,000-vote advantage over the Republican party in terms of turnout.
President Biden took the win with 93% of the vote, while Dean Phillips received almost 7%.
The results were consistent across Pennsylvania counties, but Shippensburg University Professor Dr. Alison Dagnes expects Biden to continue focusing on counties around major metropolitan areas that figure to vote blue, trying to convince anyone who voted for Phillips to back him in the general election.
"Any loss of support is important and so the Biden campaign is undoubtedly concerned about the percentage that went to Dean Phillips," Dagnes said.
On the Republican side, Former President Donald Trump won Pennsylvania with 83% of the vote.
Nikki Haley, who dropped out of the race in March, still received almost 17%, earning more than 150,000 votes.
Some counties in south-central Pennsylvania supported Haley at an even higher rate. She received about 20% of the vote in Dauphin and Lancaster Counties and 23% of the vote in Cumberland County.
Meanwhile, Montgomery and Chester Counties on the outskirts of Philadelphia supported Haley with 25% of the vote.
Dagnes said Trump will need to convince those voters to choose him in the general election if he wants to return to the White House.
"The suburban vote is going to be crucial for both camps and that is because a lot of these voters went for Trump in 2016 and then Biden in 2020," she said. "It is incumbent upon Donald Trump to try and woo these voters back again."
Where those Haley voters turn in November could determine the outcome of the election in what’s already expected to be a tight race.
Biden won Pennsylvania in the last presidential election by just 80,000 votes, about half of the votes Haley received on Tuesday.