Republicans surged in the Philadelphia suburbs on both sides of the Pennsylvania-New Jersey state line in the off-year elections earlier this month, suggesting that President Joe Biden is in trouble in an area that was key to his 2020 victory.
Politico reported Sunday:
Largely overlooked amid the party’s dismal suburban results in Virginia and New Jersey last week, Republicans regained ground in the vote-rich Philly suburbs after years of losses under Trump. The GOP flipped multiple row offices in populous Bucks County, carried a state Supreme Court race there, and even came close to winning seats on the county council in Delaware County, where Biden romped by nearly 30 points in 2020.
Pennsylvania will be home to highly competitive House, Senate and gubernatorial races in next year’s midterm elections — and the GOP’s local comeback here shows that Democrats’ newfound shakiness among suburban voters reaches far deeper than one or two states.
…
From April to October, Biden’s approval rating fell 14 points among suburban voters in Pennsylvania, according to surveys by Morning Consult. Biden’s favorability saw similar drops in the swing states of Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, North Carolina and Florida.
Biden’s suburban fade is no small matter. The big margins produced by the suburban Philadelphia counties of Montgomery, Bucks, Delaware, and Chester — where Biden outperformed Hillary Clinton — allowed him to win the state back from Trump in 2020.
Politico suggests that Democrats can take heart from the fact that Trump will be more difficult for Republicans to ignore in the 2022 midterm elections, where he is encouraging primary challenges to moderate incumbents, and the 20204 presidential election, when he is presumably going to run again.
However, Trump is also a strong motivating force for the Republican base, and many of his policies have been vindicated by Biden’s poor performance in office.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.