August 14, 2019
Discussion led by Will Singleton
A fascinating, ultimately puzzling deep dive into one county’s electoral behavior.
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This is a county called Luzerne County in northeast Pennsylvania. The county seat is Wilkes-Barre. It's not very prosperous, fraying at the edges, and has been hurting for a long time. And combing through the vote in the three critical swing states, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, I discovered Luzerne County, which is a traditionally Democratic county, hadn't voted Republican since 1988 for Bush senior. President Obama won it twice, but it surged in the other direction for Trump, and he won it by 20 points, building up such a margin in this one county that it was 60 percent of his victory margin for the state of Pennsylvania. So without this one county he wouldn't have won the state or perhaps the presidency."
On how Trump was able to connect to voters in Luzerne
"Well, I think people base most of their vote for president on the extent to which they can relate to them on a human level, how likable they are. And I think that that is in the end more important than where they stand on a variety of issues. And I think the people that I settled on generally like Trump on most issues but really liked his style. They just liked his moxie, his feistiness, how he gets up every morning and has a tweetstorm and sticks it to the elites."
https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2018/10/17/pennsylvania-trump-2016-election
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/ben-bradlee-jr/the-forgotten-bradlee/