When Donald Trump arrived in Scranton as a presidential candidate in 2016, he made a promise that drew a standing ovation from the crowd.

Trump said he would bring anthracite coal mining back to northeastern Pennsylvania, even though much of the industry had disappeared by the 1950s.

That message thrilled a largely working-class crowd, as did much of Trump’s speech, said Chris Borick, who was there that day and is now a political science professor and director of the Public Opinion Institute at Muhlenberg College in Allentown.

Trump won that election with strong support from the region, including Schuylkill County, where he received nearly 70 percent of the vote, a percentage that barely budged in the next two presidential elections.

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Members of the Republican Party watch national coverage of the presidential election on Fox News at the Port Bar and Grill in Port Carbon on Tuesday, November 5, 2024… DAVID MCKEOWN / MULTIMEDIA EDITOR

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Political signs line the street outside the Yorkville Hose Fire-Rescue, Pottsville, as voters head to poll sites to cast their ballots Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024… DAVID MCKEOWN / MULTIMEDIA EDITOR

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Members of the Republican Party watch national coverage of the presidential election on Fox News at the Port Bar and Grill in Port Carbon on Tuesday, November 5, 2024… DAVID MCKEOWN / MULTIMEDIA EDITOR

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Trump’s failure to restore coal mining in the region doesn’t seem as important to his base as his argument, Borick said.

Trump tells them the government has mostly failed the region, including Schuylkill County, and once again promises to support these people, Borick said.

“It’s not necessarily the details that they’re looking at, but the broader argument that he’s on their side,” Borick said. “Even if the evidence is not always there, they believe in him. His message absolutely resonates here, and his essence doesn’t deviate that much.”

Trump received 51,416 votes in Schuylkill County in this election and Vice President Kamala Harris received 20,729, according to final but unofficial results.

Many of those who voted for Trump believe the global economy has hurt them, which is why they like his promises of tariffs, his plans to restrict free trade, as well as his bombastic style, said Borick.

“They have the idea that they have been sold out by business elites and that the government’s economic policies have not protected them. Trump exploited that,” he said. “There is no denying that he is an excellent salesman. He has been all his life.

The county’s demographics also match well with Trump’s base, with a higher-than-average percentage of white people, an older population and a high concentration of working-class voters, he said.

“This is the very heart of his district,” Borick said.

Trump won all but one of Schuylkill County’s 125 voting precincts, with the exception of Pottsville’s Third Ward, which Harris won by 15 votes.

This means that for the third election in a row, Trump virtually swept the county. Even though his Republican predecessors – John McCain and Mitt Romney – carried Schuylkill in 2008 and 2012, they did not get a comparable percentage of the vote to Trump and both lost their races to President Barack Obama.

McCain received 53.1% of Schuylkill’s vote and Romney received 55.6%, while Trump received 69.4, 69 and 70.5% in 2016, 2020 and 2024, respectively.

The percentage of voters in Schuylkill registered as Republicans has increased over the past 15 years, which has benefited Trump, but it has also caused a party shift, said Berwood Yost, director of the Center for Opinion Research and also from Floyd. Public Policy Institute at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster.

The Republican Party currently has an advantage of more than 2-1 among registered voters in Schuylkill, according to the county elections office.

“The county has gone from moderately Republican to strongly Republican,” Yost said, and the same is true for much of northeastern Pennsylvania. “It’s definitely taken a turn.”

This is largely because white, working-class voters are attracted to Trump’s promises, particularly those who live in counties with lower percentages of college graduates and lower median household incomes. are below the state average, he said.

Many voters who have struggled with inflation blamed Biden and Harris for rising prices, he said.

“They feel left behind,” he said, and they expect Trump to change that.

Among municipalities and voting precincts in Schuylkill County, Trump had his highest total in South Manheim Township, where 1,348 voters cast ballots for him, or 74.4 percent of the vote.

He won more than 80% of the vote in 10 constituencies led by Eldred Township where he won 84.9% of the vote, followed by Upper Mahantongo Township with 83.8, Hegins Township in the east with 81.8 percent, Hubley Township with 81.5 percent, Tremont Township with 81, Porter Township to the east at 80.6, Township from Porter to the west at 80.5, Tower City at 80.4, First Ward of Pine Grove Township at 80.3 and Washington Township to the south at 80.2.

With many close races at the national and state level, Trump probably also increased the vote totals among other Republican candidates just enough to give them close victories, Borick said.

If the Democratic Party wants to increase its registered voters, it needs to do a better job of talking about its candidates’ successes in helping blue-collar workers and families, said Todd Zimmerman, chairman of the Schuylkill County Democratic Committee.

For example, he said that President Joe Biden’s infrastructure legislation helped fund the reconstruction of Route 61 between St. Clair and Frackville, that his CHIPS and Science Act boosted local manufacturing, that his work on Lower drug prices have significantly reduced the cost of insulin and other widely used prescriptions, and his economic policies have lowered unemployment and, more recently, inflation and interest rates.

Zimmerman worries that if Trump follows through on his mass deportation promise, it will create a labor shortage in industries where immigrants now do most of the work, from picking lettuce to roofing.

“This could be a rude awakening,” he said. “We need these workers.”

Yet many still believe Trump is the one most likely to help the working class, Zimmerman said. The economy is already strong and will likely continue that trend, which many will attribute to the new president, he said.

Schuylkill Republican County Chairman Gary Feathers was not available for comment.

Zimmerman recommended that the next Democratic presidential candidate visit more sites that have benefited from his policies and hold fewer rallies.

In Schuylkill, there were actually nearly 500 more voters for Harris this election than for Biden in 2020, Zimmerman said, which was the party’s goal.

But that wasn’t the case in many counties, including Philadelphia, where Harris received fewer votes than Biden, not because people turned to Trump, but because they didn’t vote from everything, he said.

It’s a problem the party needs to resolve, he said.

“The Democrats didn’t show up,” he said. “It’s our fault.”