Talk Elections

Why did PA vote to the left of NY in 1984

There was a thread about this very topic before, and on that thread, it was said that Mondale's strength in Southwestern Pennsylvania (Allegheny, Westmoreland, Greene, Washington Counties, etc.) and in Philadelphia itself helped to keep the state within single digits. Black voters did not like Reagan at all, and thus Philadelphia voted more heavily Democratic than New York City. In New York, Reagan got over 40% in Queens, won Staten Island with more than 60% of the vote, and managed to do relatively well in the other three boroughs, even hitting 30% in Manhattan, if I am not mistaken.

He dominated Westchester, Rockland, Nassau, and Sussex Counties, and swept most of upstate New York except for Albany and Ithaca. I assume that ethnic white voters in New York City, and white-collar, upper-crust white professionals in the city and in the suburbs, helped Reagan. Mondale's performance in Pennsylvania can also be explained by the presence of more unionized white-working class voters, who reacted adversely to the Reagan Administration's economic policies.

What he said.

People have this misguided belief that Reagan monolithically won "heartland areas" in a landslide in 1984 because of Muh Reagan Democrats.

Rural voters and small town voters by and large were not in love with Ronald Reagan. His economic policies indisputably hurt them during his presidency. Reagan was the president for Sunbelt suburbanites in California and Florida and the Tristate and Chicagoland suburbs who just wanted their taxes cut indiscriminately and wanted criminals locked up with the keys thrown away.

If you compare Nixon's 1972 landslide to Reagan's 1984 landslide, this becomes even clearer. Nixon's coalition was much more rural and downscale: he overperformed Reagan by leaps and bounds in central Pennsylvania for example. Meanwhile, Reagan did much better than Nixon in places like the San Francisco Bay area and the Northeast.

I thought Reagan was disliked in Appalachia compared to Nixon (in many areas he did worse there in 84 than Nixon did in 68) but I thought Reagan did pretty well in other rural areas

He did well in non-unionised, non-working class rural areas like every republican does. But in even rural counties that were historically Republican but had a working-class base tended much more democratic during the Reagan presidency

Yah In 1988 blue collar voters of all types (outside the south) swung heavily against the GOP.


But in 84 for example Reagan did very well in Western WI , and NW IL as well

Including the south.

They didnt swing that hard inside the south. TN actually swung R.

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This was Pennsylvania's employment chart in the mid 1970s and mid 1980s

And this was NY's

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Considering NY was more suburban and less dependent on manufacturing it makes sense that the tax cuts had a much larger effect on NY than PA.


As for why in 1988 NY voted to the left of PA.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_Cuomo

Mondale campaigned pretty hard in PA. Also, PA had one of the most aged populations outside of FL, which points to Mondale doing relatively well (at least compared to McGovern).

Would have been an interesting result if Mondale actually flipped Pennsylvania, hearing the pundits have to explain that away with an otherwise 48 state loss lol. If he would have carried Massachusetts or Rhode Island that year it would have been easier to explain away.

In the 1984 Pennsylvania almost completely voted like a downsized NY.
NYC (minus Staten Island) is comparable to Philly County (Strong D)
Staten Island, Long Island and Westchester county is comparable to the Philly suburbs. (Strong R)
Albany, Buffalo, Ithaca, Rochester and Syracuse are comparable to Pittsburgh and Erie (Lean D/Lean R)

This leaves the rural areas. All of the remaining largely rural parts of NYC were solid red, most of Pennsylvania's rural areas (around the centre of the state) were also solid red however you had the unionised, rural, blue collar areas around Pittsburgh in SW Pennsylvania that voted strongly for Mondale. This was the area which edged PA towards Mondale compared to NY.

tl;dr Strongly Democratic, blue-collar, rural, white areas in SW Penn that NY state didn't have.