How did Santorum win Pennsylvania in 2000 but not Bush?

[IceSpear]

Klink was an underfunded low energy loser that ran literally no ads in the Philadelphia media market. Seriously, not a single ad. Look it up if you don't believe me. I think that answers the question well enough, but here are some other factors:

- Santorum was always known as very conservative, but in 2000 he was not widely seen as having gone off the deep end yet.

- This was back when PA Democrats were still chasing their tail trying to win Western PA rather than focusing on their growing base in the East. Klink is the epitome of this failed strategy. The people insisting Santorum had "appeal to Western PA Democrats" are completely off base here. Klink actually performed fairly well in Western PA, it was where he was from. But he performed absolutely abysmally in the East. He lost Delaware County for god's sake.

- Klink was pro-life, which was supposedly a good idea to appeal to the "populists" in the West, but in reality it just sent the socially liberal swing voters in the Philly suburbs right into the arms of Santorum.

[IceSpear]

Split-ticket voting.  Contrary to popular myth, coattail effects are very rare because not everyone votes a straight party ticket.

I suspect a lot of it had to do with Santorum's strong so-con stances--it helped him win a lot of blue collar union votes around Pittsburgh and other regions.

lol no, not at all. He won because social liberals around Philadelphia did not vote for Ron Klink.

Pretty much. Though not just due to Klink being a SoCon, also because most of them didn't even know who he was (since he ran no ads there!!!)

Just look at the 96 -> 00 swing map in PA, for the presidential race:



Yes, despite the nation going from +9 Clinton to a tie in the popular vote, the Philadelphia area STILL swung to Gore. Despite this, the incompetent PA Dems forced underfunded loser Klink in, and he proceeded to lose these areas by double digits by being a SoCon just like Santorum and not running a single ad there.

As bad as the Sestak/McGinty fiasco was, nothing can top the incompetence of PA Dems in 2000.

[IceSpear]

The difference between Casey and Klink is that Casey is competent (in 2006, at least. In 2012 his campaign was Klink-esque.)

It's true Casey being somewhat conservative on social issues helped him crush Santorum into a fine powder in 2006, but that was overkill. A generic D might have beat Santorum by "only" 5-10 points instead of nearly 20, but the end result would still be the same. Casey lost nearly all of this support in 2012, and was dragged over the finish line by Obama voters in the East. Same thing with Warner in 2014.