During next Tuesday’s election, many nervous voters, pollsters and campaign officials will pay close attention to Erie County, Pennsylvania, which has chosen the victor in the last four presidential contests.
Over the past decade, the margins between winner and loser have narrowed, reflecting the national trend of closer elections. Maybe that’s not a big surprise. After all, “Erie County is a microcosm of the entire nation,” said Jeff Bloodworth, a history professor at Gannon University in downtown Erie.
Erie County, the largest county by area in the state, is “a little whiter, it’s a little poorer and it’s a little less educated than the average in Pennsylvania,” Bloodworth explained.
Democratic and Republican presidential candidates campaigned here in the final weeks of the race for the White House.
“Erie County is a pivot county. “The way you all vote in presidential elections often ends up predicting the national outcome,” Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris reported at a recent rally at the Erie Insurance Arena.
Former Republican President Donald Trump, during his appearance at the Bayfront Convention Center, told the crowd: “I’m here in Erie, Pennsylvania, with the workers who used to be Democrats, but now they’re all Trump Republicans because they know Trump will lead to the Promised Land.”
Democrats traditionally prevail in the city limits. But the party is taking nothing for granted: It is pushing for maximum participation in both the city and the county.
“We’re past the point of persuasion and it’s a matter of getting our grassroots voters out to vote, and nothing works better than door-knocking and face-to-face contact,” said local party chairman Sam Talarico.
Visits to Erie by presidential candidates “do make a difference as far as enthusiasm goes,” according to Talarico.
With the poll lead coming and going and possibly unreliable in such a close race, “the only thing we can rely on is enthusiasm, and we know that enthusiasm in Erie County is through the roof,” Talarico added.
It is in the more rural communities of Erie County where Republicans are strongest.
Harold Ross has been knocking on Trump’s behalf on the doors of Erie County – where he lives – and neighboring Warren County.
“You knock on a door and you don’t know what you’re going to find. You might run into a hardliner, a Democrat. “You try to stay neutral because you don’t want to appear aggressive,” explained Ross, who was wearing a T-shirt showing the former president’s mugshot when he was arrested in 2023 in Georgia after being accused of trying to illegally overturn the result of the 2020 election.
“I have met Democrats who tell me that they are changing sides, that they are going to vote for Donald Trump,” Ross said.
Linda Pezzino runs the Trump campaign office in Corry City. Pezzino said she had spent sleepless nights worrying about Trump’s fate in the election.
“Suddenly something came over me and I said, ‘He won. He’s winning. He’s going to win Pennsylvania,’” Pezzino recalled.
Erie had a long period of being on the losing side, regardless of the party in power. Jobs and people left as factories closed and Pennsylvania became part of America’s Rust Belt.
A revival is attracting recreational tourism with activities ranging from boating to wine tasting.
Mario Mazza oversees a second generation of family vineyards. His father and uncle were immigrants from Italy and developed the family business, located along the shore of Lake Erie, for more than half a century, into one that has more than 240 acres of grape and grain farming.
Some in the county, according to Mazza, are tired of all the attention presidential campaigns pay to voters.
“I don’t know anyone who is enjoying that much attention,” he said.
Mazza said he wanted to hear more pragmatism and policy nuance from presidential campaigns and less one-liners and inflammatory language, especially on an issue critical to his industry: immigrant labor.
“Without labor, this country’s agricultural machinery will grind to a halt. And I think anyone in agriculture knows that. Anyone in the food supply chain knows that and realizes that,” said Mazza, standing at the edge of a field of freshly harvested vines behind the family’s main rustic Mediterranean-style winery in the North East district. Township.
Hispanic voters in Pennsylvania
The winery is more upscale than the typical fast-casual places that dot the city of Erie, a half-hour drive to the southwest.
At La Cocina Coqui, customers flock to pick up their lunchtime takeout orders of banana sandwiches and dumplings. Many are Spanish speakers and crave owner Leida Rodríguez’s Puerto Rican-inspired dishes.
An influx of Hispanics, especially those from Puerto Rico or whose parents were born in that Caribbean territory of the United States, has helped offset Erie’s declining population in recent years.
Rodríguez said that, this election season, his clients also long for a president who will devour inflation.
“The cost of food. Rent is going up here. “They’re just looking at things like that: who would help?” he says during a brief break from the small restaurant’s kitchen.
Democrats’ advantage in voter registration and their campaign organization here would appear to give Harris the advantage, but Professor Bloodworth said that assumption may be outdated.
“Before Trump, you looked at this and said, ‘The Democrats are going to win. They are organized. They have a dozen paid employees in a county of 200,000 people. That has to be significant. Unless it isn’t, because Donald Trump has changed the rules of American politics.”
Erie County Democrats and Republicans seem to agree on one thing right now: They’re nervous about how much is at stake before Election Day in this must-win county in a must-win state.
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