Allegheny County stayed true to its blue roots on Election Day, but the Democratic vote totals could not overcome the sea of surrounding counties that helped turn Pennsylvania red for President-elect Donald Trump.
D Raja, chairman of the Republican Committee of Allegheny County, on Wednesday hailed the result as “a great first step.”
“Every time I talked to the union rank-and-file, they would tell me, ‘Hey, we’re voting Trump,’” Mr. Raja said. “You can see he’s sort of pulling together voters from both parties to embrace his message. I think that’s the big takeaway.”
Mr. Trump’s populist call resonated across Pennsylvania, which hadn’t backed a Republican for president since 1988.
“This election took the rural parts of Pennsylvania and pitted them against suburban and urban Pennsylvania,” said Terry Madonna, a Franklin & Marshall College professor and pollster. “Donald Trump got twice as many votes among the white working-class voters as Mitt Romney did four years ago. He won this race because of the enthusiasm and turnout of those voters.
“The white working class feels left out, that life isn’t much better for them, that they’re working in marginal jobs. They feel forgotten, left-behind. These are the people who have the angst and the anger at the establishment. These are the people that the populist wing of the Republican Party appealed to.”
Allegheny County again backed the Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton, who received 55.84 percent of the vote. The Republican, Mr. Trump, got 39.6 percent. In 2012 those numbers were 56.54 and 42.01 percent, and in 2008 they were 57.05 and 41.64 percent.
The percentage of county residents who voted straight-party line was almost identical to that of four years ago — 42 percent.
It’s long been said that Pittsburgh and Philadelphia go blue and the rest of the state runs red. That was essentially true this year, though this time the red outnumbered the blue.
“Allegheny County and Philadelphia hit the numbers that have always been the Democratic talking point, which is [to] come out 100,000 ahead in Allegheny County and 400,000 ahead in Philadelphia, and you win,” said Pittsburgh City Councilman Dan Gilman, a Democrat. “That’s not the target numbers anymore. … We need much larger margins of victory out of Philadelphia and Allegheny County and certainly out of southeastern Pennsylvania’s inner-ring counties than we got. That’s pretty clear.”
Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto, however, said those talking-point numbers should still hold true.
“But that takes into account that Democrats are voting Democrat,” he said. “What we saw [Tuesday] was Democrats voting Republican.”
Not so much in Allegheny County, but in its more-rural neighbors.
Butler County saw consistent backing for the Republican, roughly 66 percent in 2012 and 2016, but support for the Democratic candidate there dropped 3 percentage points, from 31.8 to 28.8 percent.
The real hits to Ms. Clinton’s hopes in Western Pennsylvania came in Beaver and Washington counties, where support for the Democratic nominee fell more than 7 percent from what Barack Obama received in 2012. In Westmoreland County, she fell more than 5 percentage points short of what Mr. Obama netted.
As far as voter turnout was concerned, there were ups and downs. Although Allegheny County participation increased to more than 70 percent, almost 3 percentage points from 2012, the turnout dropped in Butler (73.5 to 72 percent) and Washington (72.5 to 66.3 percent) counties. Yet turnout jumped markedly in Beaver (from 70.66 to 74 percent) and Westmoreland (from 67 to almost 75 percent).
“A lot of folks were surprised at the level of support that President-elect Trump would get,” said Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald. “I think there’s an awful lot of frustration for people who have not enjoyed some of the economic benefits that some of the others have seen over the last few years.”
Mr. Fitzgerald said the test will be whether Mr. Trump and his team can bridge that divide.
Another concern voiced by local officials is how Pittsburgh will fare in a Trump administration.
“I hope to be wrong,” Mr. Gilman said, “but basing it off history, I think some of the great investments we’ve seen from President Obama in things like Smart Cities and the TIGER grants that have been transformative for our region are in serious jeopardy.”
“[I’m] very concerned,” echoed Mr. Peduto. “As the mayor of the city of Pittsburgh, [my] greatest concern is over what will happen to our city. As programs like HUD and Community Development Block Grants and others become cut or eliminated, it will affect the most vulnerable, and there will be no safety net for them. There is a vacuum where domestic policy should be.”
Mr. Peduto said it is a topic he looks forward to addressing with other mayors during the National League of Cities meeting here next week.
“I’m giving the keynote on welcoming day, and this morning I threw my speech in the garbage,” he said. “I’m writing a new one. And it will be a call for cities across this country.”
First Published: November 10, 2016, 5:00 a.m.
