Pennsylvania Voters Depict New Reality

By Rhodes Cook
CQ Senior Staff Writer

Over the years, few states have better reflected the nation's body politic than Pennsylvania. It has voted with the winner in 11 of the last 12 presidential elections, and this year backed President Clinton over Republican Bob Dole by a margin of 49 percent to 40 percent - nearly identical to the margin nationwide.

Clinton's 9-percentage-point victory in Pennsylvania also matched his advantage over President George Bush in the Keystone State four years ago.

But the vote pattern in Pennsylvania differed markedly this year from the 1992 pattern, and that difference illustrates why Clinton was able to score a comfortable re-election victory in 1996 but not the landslide triumph that many political observers had anticipated.

The presidential voting across Pennsylvania played out as many hard-fought races in the state often do. Clinton rolled out of the Democratic stronghold of Philadelphia with a lead of more than 320,000 votes, and added to his advantage in the mining country of northeast Pennsylvania. Dole pared Clinton's lead in the conservative small towns and cities of the central part of the state.

But to have a chance at victory, Dole needed to sweep the affluent, Republican-oriented suburbs of Philadelphia. He didn't.

On the other hand, to score a statewide victory of massive proportions, Clinton needed to dominate the voting among traditional blue-collar Democrats in the former steel country of southwestern Pennsylvania. He failed to do so.

In short, there was a pro and con quality to Clinton's Pennsylvania victory. He ran better than any recent Democratic presidential candidate has in the well-heeled suburbs of Philadelphia, where the economy is booming and liberal positions on social issues hold sway.

But his margin plummeted from 1992 in the working-class communities of southwest Pennsylvania, anchored by Allegheny County (Pittsburgh), where conservative social values are pre- eminent and economic concerns are close to the surface.

It was a far cry from the way Hubert H. Humphrey carried the state in 1968. Humphrey swept the six counties that make up the southwest corner of Pennsylvania by 185,000 votes, while losing the four suburban counties outside Philadelphia by a total of 100,000 votes.

Clinton, though, has modified that equation. His 1992 plurality in southwest Pennsylvania - fully 235,000 votes - shrank to barely 125,000 votes this year.

But while he ran virtually even with Bush in the Philadelphia suburbs in 1992, he carried those suburbs this year by nearly 45,000 votes.

Clinton's success in suburban Philadelphia was no surprise. While the GOP enjoys a hefty registration advantage in the suburban counties, the advantage is deceiving. Many of the voters are well-heeled moderate Republicans who are quite willing to split their tickets.

In 1992, Clinton became the first Democratic presidential candidate in more than a quarter-century to carry three of the suburban counties - Bucks, Delaware and Montgomery. And he won each of the three by a larger margin this year.

Suburban women, the so-called "soccer moms," proved to be a prime Clinton target in 1996. "The tone (of the Republican platform) was not appealing to a lot of (suburban) women," says former Pennsylvania GOP Chairman Earl Baker (from suburban Chester County), and Dole was not able to mollify them.

Across the Appalachian Mountains in the southwest corner of Pennsylvania, though, a different dynamic was at play.

In spite of a heavy Democratic registration edge in the region, many Democratic voters showed less willingness to toe the Democratic line.

That was evident in the decline in Clinton's vote margin in southwest Pennsylvania. "Certainly he lost votes there on ethics and character," says Millersville University (Pa.) political scientist G. Terry Madonna.

But, adds John Brabender, the head of a Pittsburgh-based Republican political media firm, the Nov. 5 vote is also part of a long-term trend. More and more Democratic voters in southwest Pennsylvania are realizing they are philosophically in tune with the Republican Party, says Brabender. "They're pro-gun, pro- life, for welfare reform and for tough crime measures."

And, just as the once-powerful GOP organizations in the Philadelphia suburbs have lost much of their clout, so too has the ability of organized labor to mobilize the Democratic vote in southwest Pennsylvania, as the region's economic base has gradually moved from heavy manufacturing to high technology and health care.

In short, the shifts in Pennsylvania's political scene may underscore a reality of politics that was obscured by the status quo nature of the 1996 elections: After the upheavals of 1992 and 1994, voters may not be done yet rearranging America's political landscape.

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