This election season, voters across the country are weighing A
rematch between former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden.
Pennsylvania's 8th District has a unique blend of urban centres
and rural areas.
The district also has seen voting preferences change over the
last decade.
Some areas are now trending more Democratic,
while others are leaning conservative.
I was in the union all my life.
I was a Democrat. But they've changed tremendously.
They they used to help people.
Now it's doesn't seem that way.
You know, the platform of the Republican Party was
more in line with my young beliefs.
When Trump won, I really
looked back into, you know,
who I really AM and realized that the party,
the Republican Party of 2016,
was not the same party
as when I was young.
I I could say that at one point I was
all for Republican.
But my views have changed.
It's it seems to me as though,
you know, you have, well,
I'm all Democrat or I'm all Republican,
and I think it's so black and white.
And I think we as people truly do live in
the Gray.
Former President Barack Obama won
Pennsylvania's 8th district in 2008 and
2012, but in 2016 Trump was able to capture the
voters in the area.
In 2020, Biden won some of them back.
But ever since 2016, Democrats have been struggling to regain
the union base.
The cultural battle is decidedly in favour of Republican politics
right now here.
And I think that's part of the reason why you
saw people shift,
right, is that you have people who are union voters
who voted for the Democratic Party because of unions.
And they look around and they go,
well, the Democratic Party doesn't speak for my cultural values
and the Republican Party does.
So then I'm going to transition my vote.
I think that the quick,
the quick version is these were voters that were probably
already leaning away from the Democratic Party and then President
Trump gave them a reason to leave the Democratic Party
once and for all. I think if Biden wins,
he's going to do exactly what he's done.
He's bringing all these people in.
They they blame the Republicans for everything.
And I I don't see what they've done and created
that.
They've actually been blamed for
Trump. I honestly believe he's going to build it back
because he's a businessman.
He knows how to build
in an election year where voters aren't enthusiastic about either
major party candidate.
Some are choosing to look elsewhere.
I voted for Trump. I I agreed with some of
the things that he did.
I didn't agree with the way he handled himself,
and I think
I'd rather vote for somebody with a little bit more
character.
I think Robert Kennedy is a fresh,
new look on things, and I think he,
I think he would really do well for this country.
Swing areas like Pennsylvania's 8th District are an interesting case
in an election year that's going to be closely divided
and that will hinge on voters in a few key
battleground states. In national level politics,
we we can say is very clearly the Democratic Party
is fighting this battle that that President Biden has been
trying to to deal with.
The progressive left is not a popular group
in this part of Pennsylvania whereas obviously that that can
conflicts with a lot of Democratic Party activists nationally.
And so President Biden has to has to do that
And I think partly part of the reason why he
did so well and some of the battleground states in
the 2020 cycles because he still understands
sort of the old school classic Democratic voter that is
working class blue collar.
He speaks the language of sort of the the non
white voters that are still overwhelmingly religious and the Democratic
coalition
that a lot of maybe the progressive Democratic
voters don't understand. But he can walk that line pretty
well.
Joe Biden has been in a position for many years
where he understands how government works and operates
and you know what you can and can't accomplish and
how you can accomplish it and government move slowly and
people are very instant gratification.
If I don't have what I want right now,
I'm not going to be happy.
And it's a cultural mindset that we as a society
need to get past somehow.
How do we get past that?
It's that's the bigger question.