Last updated on April 2, 2021
PPP’s latest poll decided to test how voters in the home towns of Joe Biden and Donald Trump feel about the candidates:
Last week Donald Trump claimed that Joe Biden had abandoned Scranton, so we thought it would be interesting to do a poll of voters in Scranton to see how they feel about Biden and the presidential race. And as long as we were doing a Scranton poll we decided to do a Queens poll to see how people where Trump grew up feel about him too.
Scranton is very proud to have Joe Biden as a native son. 62% say they’re proud that Biden is from Scranton, to just 20% who say they’re ashamed of that fact.
Queens feels a little different when it comes to being where Donald Trump hails from. 70% of voters say they are ashamed of Trump being from there, to only 17% who say they are proud.
Voters in Biden’s home town feel like he cares about people there- 64% say Biden cares about people in Scranton to only 28% who don’t think he cares. People where Trump comes from feel like Biden cares about them too- 64% feel Biden cares about people in Queens, to just 20% who don’t think he does.
Voters where Trump comes from do not feel like he cares about them- only 16% think he cares about people in Queens, to 77% who don’t think he does. People in Scranton don’t think Trump cares about them either- only 27% think he cares about people in Scranton to 67% who don’t think he does.
As to Trump’s original charge that Biden has abandoned Scranton, only 26% of Scrantonians think Biden abandoned their city to 63% who disagree with that premise. Queens doesn’t feel the same way about its native son candidate- 66% there think Trump abandoned them to only 22% who don’t think he did.
In his home city of Scranton, Biden leads Trump 65-30. And in Trump’s home borough of Queens, he trails Biden 75-19.
The poll also showed that New Yorkers have high approvals for Andrew Cuomo, Chuck Schumer, and Alexandria Ocasia-Cortez.
While Biden really needs high turnout in Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and the Philadelphia suburbs to win Pennsylvania, it’s still encouraging to see that Scranton, the biggest city in Northeastern PA, is all in for their native son. Of course, Trump is still trying to win Lackawanna County:
Scranton is a symbol. For Democratic nominee Joe Biden, who lived in the city until he was ten, it’s at the core of his oft-told backstory. When former President Barack Obama introduced Biden as his vice president in 2008, it was as “the scrappy kid from Scranton who beat the odds” — a line his supporters still use.
The city is equally important for President Donald Trump, and his narrative of appealing to unexpected voters. Northeastern Pennsylvania, long home to faithful Democrats, swung hard for Trump four years ago.
Scranton is the Lackawanna County seat, and while Trump didn’t win it in 2016, he captured a lot of Lackawanna votes. About 23,000 more people cast ballots for him than they did for Mitt Romney in 2012 — one of the biggest swings of any county. And neighboring Luzerne County did flip. Barack Obama won it by five percentage points in 2012; Trump won it by 19.
By the way, Biden picked up more GOP support in Pennsylvania:
Biden’s newest Republican supporters from the commonwealth include the following:
- Philly native Jim Greenwood, who served in the United States Congress from 1993 through 2005, representing the 8th Congressional District, which was primarily located in Bucks County in those days. Prior to that, Greenwood served as a Republican in Harrisburg in both the state house and state senate.
- Bill Clinger, a graduate of Pottstown’s Hill School. From 1979 through 1997, Clinger was a United States congressman representing the good people of the Fifth District, which includes parts of Chester, Montgomery, and Philadelphia counties and the entirety of Delco. Though Clinger was very active in investigating some of Bill Clinton’s scandals, his support of Biden isn’t a huge surprise. In 2016, Clinger was one of many GOPers who signed a letter declaring then candidate Trump to be “manifestly unqualified to be president.”
- Charlie Dent, who served the 15th District in Congress from 2005 through 2018; the 15th at various times including parts of Montgomery and Berks counties. Before Dent retired in 2018, he reportedly voted in alignment with Trump’s wishes almost all of the time. But after he retired, Dent decried the “disorder” and “chaos” coming from Trump’s Oval Office.
Also:
A federal judge in Pennsylvania on Sunday put a high-profile election case on hold, telling President Donald Trump's campaign that its claims must wait, at least until October, for state courts in the presidential battleground to clear up crucial fights, including over collecting and counting mail-in ballots.U.S. District Judge J. Nicholas Ranjan put the case on hold until Oct. 5 to see whether state courts decide, or at least narrow, the issues raised by Trump's campaign and the national Republican Party.Opponents had argued that Ranjan should dismiss the case under a U.S. Supreme Court precedent that matters of state law should be left to state courts to interpret.
And Pennsylvania Democrats are celebrating this news. Received this e-mail from the Pennsylvania Democratic Party:
A Trump-appointed federal judge just decided he won't hear Donald Trump's lawsuit against mail-in voting until the PA Supreme Court has ruled first.
That's a big win for PA voters, and a huge blow to Trump's voter suppression scheme. Now, the PA Democratic Party's countersuit that protects mail-in votes and ensures every ballot gets counted becomes even more powerful.
But we are not out of the woods yet! It's now even more crucial that we prevail in state court and prepare for whatever schemes Trump may deploy on Election Day.
Click here to donate to the Pennsylvania Democratic Party.
Click here to donate and get involved with Biden-Harris ticket.
And let’s give Chuck Schumer his Senate Majority. Click below to donate and get involved with these Senate Democrats campaigns:
The Politicus is a collaborative political community that facilitates content creation directly on the site. Our goal is to make the political conversation accessible to everyone.
Any donations we receive will go into writer outreach. That could be advertising on Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit or person-to-person outreach on College campuses. Please help if you can:
