There was always a narrow path for Allegheny County’s longtime Democratic district attorney to win re-election as the Republican nominee. There was an even narrower path for a Republican to be elected county executive.
Stephen A. Zappala Jr. threaded the needle. Joe Rockey didn’t.
“It was pretty clear that there was an electoral road map that Rockey could follow, and that Zappala had already laid down a path,” said Brock McCleary, a longtime Republican pollster based in York.
Mr. McCleary had a unique perspective from working on both races. He was one of a constellation of GOP operatives who ran Mr. Zappala’s general election campaign after the lifelong Democrat lost the May primary to progressive challenger Matt Dugan but also won the Republican nomination as a write-in candidate, setting up their November rematch. Mr. McCleary also did polling for Save Allegheny County, an outside political group that aired TV ads supporting Mr. Rockey in the race for county executive. (While political professionals aren’t allowed to work for both a campaign and an outside group in the same race, it’s legal to work for a campaign in one race and an outside group in a different race.)
Mr. Zappala ended up winning his rematch against Mr. Dugan by three percentage points. Mr. Rockey lost to Democrat Sara Innamorato by about 2.5 percentage points, the closest race for county executive in more than a decade.
Detailed data from surveys Mr. McCleary conducted for both the Zappala campaign and for Save Allegheny County, obtained by the Post-Gazette, along with the actual election results, show how Mr. Zappala and Mr. Rockey both had paths to victory, how Mr. Zappala successfully traversed his, and how Mr. Rockey came up short.
The most obvious explanation for why Mr. Zappala won but Mr. Rockey lost is that, in a county where Democrats outnumber Republicans by two-to-one, it mattered greatly that Mr. Zappala was a 25-year Democratic incumbent — albeit one running on a GOP ticket.
But Mr. McCleary also pointed to data that showed significant divides in the Democratic coalition on issues of crime and public safety that benefitted Mr. Zappala as a traditional prosecutor running against a progressive criminal justice reformer.
A late-July survey for Mr. Zappala’s campaign indicated that, to prevail in November, he would have to win between a quarter and a third of Democrats and independent voters, while holding nearly all Republicans.
“There was very little margin for error in either race,” Mr. McCleary said. “The Democrats he started with, he could afford to lose almost none of them.”
The survey found that crime was the top issue in the race for 27% of Democrats and 38% of independents, with about half of both groups saying crime was getting worse. And importantly, opinion was divided about how to improve public safety: 52%, including a third of Democrats, favored supporting and investing in police and the courts, compared to 45% who favored increasing mental health and social services.
“The divide among Democrats on issues of public safety is the pathway to victory in urban centers,” Mr. McCleary said. “It’s present not just in Allegheny County and Pittsburgh, it’s present in many places. Allegheny County happened to be the place that circumstances aligned really well.”
Mr. Rockey, a political newcomer, had a steeper hill to climb.
“He doesn’t have any of that,” Mr. McCleary said. “He doesn’t have that natural quarter of Democrats as well as moderates who are identifying him as one of their own.”
And after a campaign in which Ms. Innamorato made protecting abortion access a key issue, Mr. McCleary said voters were simply more animated by that in the race for county executive than in the DA’s contest.
Survey data and the election results suggest that the voters most likely to support both Ms. Innamorato and Mr. Zappala were women without a college degree, especially younger women. Much of Ms. Innamorato’s paid TV advertising and other campaign messaging painted Mr. Rockey as a threat to abortion access. It clearly took a toll: A late-October poll for Save Allegheny County found that Mr. Rockey had lost ground among women without a college degree to the tune of 16 percentage points.
“There’s no doubt that abortion plays a role,” Mr. McCleary said of the electoral split decision. “College-educated women just have a much stronger allegiance to the Democratic Party than working-class women.” Ms. Innamorato’s campaign, he said, was “able to motivate younger women on the abortion issue. Not that it’s germane to the race. But [voters] see it as more germane to a county executive race than to a district attorney race.”
First Published: November 17, 2023, 10:30 a.m.
Updated: November 18, 2023, 4:53 p.m.
