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:
