Most believe Pa. on the wrong track
Election integrity most pressing issue
It’s been quite a while since Pennsylvanians thought the Keystone State was on the right track.
It was before the hotly contested presidential election of 2020, and the insurrection that followed. It was before the COVID-19 pandemic took hold, closing businesses and schools and killing more than 620,000 Americans.
You have to go all the way back to the first month of 2020. That’s the last time the Franklin & Marshall College poll found a majority of registered voters felt Pennsylvania was “headed in the right direction.”
The latest version of the poll, released today, shows that now more than half feel the opposite. Of those polled, 53% said the state is on the wrong track.
“The highest ratings we saw were before the pandemic,” said Berwood Yost, director of the Center for Opinion Research at the Lancaster college. “That was the last time people thought things were going well and felt good about the future. And the pandemic ended that.”
The poll shows that there are several reasons people are concerned about the direction of the state. Sitting atop the list of the biggest problems facing residents are the current state of politics and the coronavirus.
Yost said he believes those two issues are closely connected.
“I think the combination of the disruption created by the pandemic and the longstanding concern of the way politics impacts our lives is contributing to this overall feeling about where we are headed,” he said. “And this concern about politics has only been further intensified for some people because of the government response to the pandemic.”
Yost also pointed out that for the first time a notable portion of voters stated that election integrity was the most pressing issue facing the state.
“It was interesting to see that people were repeating this claim, that there was widespread voter fraud, (which) has been made by some of our elected officials,” he said. “That is informative in that when people hear things it can affect
their perception of what’s happening.”
Yost said the finding reinforces the fact that words matter.
The survey reflects interviews with 446 registered voters: 207 Democrats, 173 Republicans and 66 independents.
Reforming government
The statewide survey found that the concern with state government covers various ways it functions.
It found a majority of Pennsylvanians support reforms that would change how campaigns are financed, how local governments are financed and reduce the size of the Legislature.
They would also like to change the way legislative districts are drawn — a complicated process taking place now in Harrisburg that many people on both sides of the aisle criticize as a highly partisan practice.
The districts are currently drawn by a five-member commission. Four of the members are the majority and minority leaders of the House and Senate and the fifth is a nonelected citizen.
More than 63% of registered voters believe the state should change the way it draws its legislative districts, and 65% support having an independent commission redraw state legislative districts.
That sentiment crosses party lines with 76% of Democrats, 69% of independents and 58% of Republicans supporting the creation of an independent commission.
Pa. Senate race
The upcoming race to replace retiring Republican Sen. Pat Toomey has drawn significant interest from politicians in both parties.
At the moment, two in five Democrats and two in three Republicans remain undecided about their choice to represent their party on the ballot in 2022.
On the Democratic side of the ticket, John Fetterman
appears to be leading the field. The poll shows that the lieutenant governor is the first or second choice of about 30% of the Democrats surveyed while congressman Connor Lamb follows with 14% support.
The Republican field, however, appears to be more fluid.
The poll shows that Sean Parnell, a military veteran and former congressional candidate, is the first or second choice of about 10% of the Republicans surveyed.
Former congressional candidate Kathy Barnette follows with 8% and former lieutenant gubernatorial candidate Jeff Bartos, who has Berks ties, has 7% support.
Yost said the findings are interesting, but not surprising given how early it is in election cycle.
Note: The survey was conducted between Aug. 9 and Sunday. The margin of error is 6.4 percentage points. The Reading Eagle is a media partner of the poll.