Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
BIDEN WINS BIG IN MONTCO, CHESCO
Pennsylvania played a pivotal role in Joe Biden’s apparent victory over Donald Trump and results in the greater Pottstown area played an equally pivotal part, a review of vote totals shows.
How did Biden defeat a sitting president, making Donald Trump only the second oneterm president in 27 years?
One answer is he did it with a lot of help from the Philadelphia suburbs.
As of 3 p. m. Thursday, NBC news was reporting that Biden won Pennsylvania and its 20 electoral votes by 53,695 votes. NBC had a total of 3,390,026 votes for Biden and 3,336,529 for Trump.
Two things are immediately significant.
Local Numbers Mattered
First, Libertarian candidate Jo Jorgenson won 78,133 votes in the Keystone State. Had those votes gone to either Biden or Trump, it could have meant a different outcome for the nation.
The second thing is to point out that Biden’s margin of victory in Montgomery County was more than 130,000 votes, meaning Biden’s margin of victory statewide is less than all the votes he received in Montgomery County. In other words, without Montgomery County’s votes, Biden could not have won the state and might not have won the presidency.
Similarly, Biden’s 52,221vote victory margin in Chester county nearly matches his victory margin for the entire commonwealth. So again, Biden would have struggled to win Pennsylvania without Chester County voters. In Chester County, Biden garnered 181,170, whereas Trump only received 127,693 votes.
The same can also be said for Delaware County, where Biden’s 85,758- vote margin of victory represents 62 percent of the vote there — 203,601 to Trump’s 117,843.
Biden won Chester County, Montgomery County and Delaware County all told by 62 percent to 38 percent over Trump. It meant a nearly 270,000 vote advantage in just those three counties.
Another way to look at it is by school districts. One could also truthfully argue that the 15,388 votes provided by the four municipalities that comprise the Phoenixville School District represent 29 percent of Biden’s victory margin.
But there is no amount of numerical gymnastics that can but Berks County in Biden’s column. Berks was solidly in Trump’s camp.
Biden did not win a single town in The Mercury’s Berks County coverage area, although he came closest in Exeter township, where Trump’s margin of victory was only 422 votes out of 13,222 cast.
Maps can be misleading
The figures, which are not yet fully counted and not yet official, paint a remarkable story in counties that less than a decade ago had all been considered solidly Republican, and mostly voted that way, at least in presidential elections.
As the presidential voting map shows, Montgomery County went predominantly, but not entirely blue in the presidential contest.
To the surprise of few locals, the northwestern part of the county remained solidly red. But these maps, as can the electoral maps of the nation, can be misleading when viewed in an all-or-nothing context.
First of all, it’s important to remember that not all spaces are equal in terms of population. The margins of victory in some blue areas are much thinner than the map makes it appear.
For example, Biden’s victory in West Pottsgrove was only by a 25- vote margin, out of 1,777 votes cast. And voters there split their tickets, reinforcing the narrative that this was not so much a blue wave, as a referendum on Donald Trump.
Change the contest, for example, and reliably Republican West Pottsgrove turns red in both the Auditor General’s contest and the contest for the state’s 147th House District, although only by a four- vote margin for Republican victor Tracy Pennycuick.
In Collegeville, which voted by 61 percent for Biden, the second- largest margin, the same voters rejected Democrat Nina Ahmad for the Auditor General’s post, preferring Republican Timothy DeFoor by a slim 36- vote margin.
In fact, look at Montgomery County through the lens of the Auditor General’s race, and it looks decidedly redder.
Similarly, the map for the contest between incumbent Democrat Madeleine Dean and Republican challenger Kathy Barnette for the 4th district Congressional seat makes it seem the race was tighter than it actually was.
According to unofficial results, Dean beat Barnette by more than 85,000 votes.
A map of Berks County results would be decidedly more monochromatic — lots of red.
Biden did not win a single one of the 14 Berks municipalities in The Mercury’s coverage.
In fact, support for the president ran so deep he won two towns, Earl and Robeson, by a 70 percent margin.
Of those towns, Exeter provided Trump his biggest numerical boost, 6,822, according to unofficial results. But there, Biden won almost as many, 6,400.
Deep dives
Maps aside, a deep dive into the numbers produced some interesting insights at the voter precinct level.
For example, although at 69 percent, Pottstown had the lowest voter turn- out rate among Montgomery County towns in The Mercury coverage, 69 percent of a big number — 9,953 votes were cast in Pottstown — adds up to more than an 83 percent turn- out in Douglass ( Mont.), where 6,005 votes were cast.
Pottstown went for Biden by more than 62 percent. Similarly, 60 percent of voters in Douglass ( Mont.) chose Trump.
But Pottstown’s totals gave Biden 6,275 votes compared to the 1,340 Doulgass ( Mont.) voters provided to Trump.
It’s worth noting that Pottstown’s votes represent about 12 percent of Biden’s margin of victory in Pennsylvania. And the 6,406 votes Phoenixville voters contributed represents another 12 percent of that margin.
The 8,212 votes Upper Providence Township voters provided to Biden’s effort represent more than 15 percent of his victory total in the state. It’s fair to say Biden did well in towns along the Schuylkill River.
This was true even in towns that Biden lost.
Divided nation, divided towns
In Chester County, Trump’s victory in places like North Coventry and East Coventry township’s was slim, voting precinct by voting precinct.
In fact, Trump won only one of East Coventry’s two voting precincts, but his total was enough to give him a victory — by 20 votes.
Only one voting precinct in North Coventry gave Trump a victory by more than 20 votes, the western most precinct along the Berks County line.
East Vincent Township’s four voting precincts also split, but in this case, three went for Biden and only one for Trump, according to the maps on the Chester County website.
Two other places where precincts showed split votes were in Perkiomen and Limerick townships.
In the northern section of Limerick, voting district 5, Trump was the overwhelming choice by 55 percent of the voters, 1,117 to 907.
But that is also the least developed, and thus least populated portion of the township and the only voting district Trump won, although the margins varied widely.
In voting district 1, 500plus more votes were cast, and there, Biden won by 52 percent, and a 105- vote margin. Things were tight in the voting district 3, where Biden’s victory was a slim 48 votes, whereas Biden won by a 259- vote margin in voting district 4.
In the end, Biden, took Limerick by a 523- vote margin.
Things were a little closer in Lower Frederick, which has just two voting districts. In the first district, Biden won 57 percent of the voters. Whereas in the geographically larger, but less populated second voting district, Trump won 54 percent of the vote.
In many ways, this dynamic mirrors the pronounced national divide between rural and more suburban and urban voters. Biden won Lower Frederick Township by 35 votes, a 1.2 percent margin of victory.
Even amid Pottstown’s overwhelming turnout for Biden, he did not win every voting precinct in the borough. In the seventh ward, there was actually a tie in the second voting precinct, which includes the Rosedale section of town, where property values are significantly higher.
There, 377 voters chose Trump and 377 chose Biden. Those numbers will no doubt change once all provisional and military votes are counted, but what are the odds?
However, in the seventh ward’s first voting precinct, Biden trounced Trump, 745 votes to 170.
It is perhaps worth noting that all of those seventh ward voters of vastly different political views on the presidency, all cast their votes in the Ricketts Community Center where volunteers gave away free coffee and donuts, no matter who they voted for.