Kamala Harris Faces Growing Concern As Philly’s Working-Class Voters Shift To Trump

In what could be a disaster for Vice President Kamala Harris’ bid for the White House, working-class voters in deep-blue Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, are starting to shift toward Republicans, particularly Donald Trump.

Speaking to Gabriel Lopez in the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia, the Philadelphia Inquirer learned that, while Lopez grew up a Democrat and voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, he will now be voting for Trump.

“Democrats keep saying [Trump] is going to bring down the economy, but he was already president for four years, and taxes were lower,” Lopez told the outlet. “We’re tired of the same politics. We got a different type of guy, and the people actually love him.”

Lopez went on to tell the outlet that Democrats haven’t kept their promises to improve his life or the lives of those in his community, who have seen rising prices over the past few years.

“Lopez embodies one of Democrats’ biggest problems in Pennsylvania: working-class voters in Philadelphia, a once reliable voting bloc for the party, have drifted right in recent years. And they’ve been disproportionately affected by rising prices over the last several years, an issue many blame Democrats for,” the Inquirer reported. “It’s one of the biggest potential areas of concern for Harris, whose quest for the White House may hinge on Pennsylvania, where President Joe Biden four years ago defeated Trump by just 80,000 votes.”

Trump won Pennsylvania in 2016 while losing Philadelphia to Clinton. In that election, Trump received just 15% of the vote in Philadelphia, while Clinton grabbed 82%. The swing toward Trump began in 2020, when he won 18% of the vote in Philadelphia compared to Biden’s 81%, NBC 10 reported at the time. Trump ultimately lost Pennsylvania to Biden that year.

The shift toward Trump was largest in working-class communities, the Inquirer reported. In 2020, Democrats lost voters in neighborhoods with high numbers of people who didn’t go to college and where poverty was also worst, the Inquirer found.

Harris needs to bring in big numbers of voters in Philadelphia if she hopes to win Pennsylvania, as large, Democrat-run cities vote for Democrats while every other area of the state tends to vote Republican. A full 20% of Pennsylvania’s Democrats live in Philadelphia, meaning Harris will have to pull in as many of them as possible. But she faces the struggles that have been in the making since 2016. In 2020, Biden performed worse than Clinton did in 2016 in 41 of Philadelphia’s 66 political wards. He barely won the state, but if those trends continue – especially if those working-class voters turn to Trump — Harris could be in for a rude awakening on election night.