US elections: Moods swing in the bellwether district of swing state Pennsylvania

Patty had retired as a high school guidance counsellor in Bethlehem. Jan was a registered nurse in the neighbouring state of New Jersey. Kathy was a teacher in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Jill had managed a furniture company in Ohio. Wendy was a professor who worked on women’s health at the University of Pennsylvania down in Philadelphia. And Fran was a nurse in New Jersey’s Trenton.

All of them were open to talking about politics, something too common in Indian small towns and villages as polls approach but surprisingly not as common in these parts where people appeared reticent when asked about politics. But none of them wanted to offer their full names or get a picture with their faces taken, apprehensive of possible profiling by the other side.

Explaining why they would vote for Harris, Wendy said, “You have to understand the context when we came of age in the 1970s. We saw what it was like when women weren’t allowed to have bank accounts, take mortgages, what life was like before ‘Roe v Wade’ (the court verdict that gave national protection to abortion and has now been reversed). We are terrified of going back.”

Jan nodded and said, “Men have no right to tell me what to do with my body. We have grandchildren. They have no right to tell them what to do with their bodies.” Wendy said she had not been a Donald Trump fan even before the abortion verdict. “He is not a good man. He is a convicted felon. He has no moral standing. He has no qualifications for the highest office of the land, yet he has developed a cult like following that defies understanding.”

A little later during the discussion, young Rebecca, probably in her 30s, walked up to the group along with her partner. She was excited to see the group knitting, asked questions about where they got their wool, and said she was moving to Missouri to set up a living facility for seniors that wasn’t corporate-owned and truly cared. “We feel like we have failed the seniors,” Rebecca said, before Wendy sought to assure her that the social conditions of her generation were far more difficult, sandwiched between elderly parents, both partners working, and exorbitant childcare. “And that is where politics and policy come in.”

But that is also where the warm social agreement of the morning veered into cordial yet awkward political differences. Asked about elections, Rebecca said, “I feel Democrats don’t care about our future, don’t care about our children. They are using chemicals and surgeries for gender reassignment. They are with big pharma. They want to censor speech.” She argued that US had no role being the “world’s policeman”, and the Biden-Harris administration had no business dragging the US into a “war with Russia” over Ukraine, a non-NATO country.

Rebecca deployed the justifications that have become rampant in the Far-Right to explain January 6, 2021, the day Trump encouraged a mob to attack the US Capitol to block the certification of the 2020 elections. “We now know that January 6 was not what it seemed. There were many government agents in that crowd. There was a conspiracy.” She also said that the riots in 2020 (an allusion to Black Lives Matter protests) disturbed her more than January 6.

In that conversation lies the complexity of the American election where women voters, a critical voting demographic, are in the final stages of their own closing arguments, even as leaders battle it out in rallies and on airwaves.

Pennsylvania is the most important of the swing states, which Donald Trump won 44,292 votes in 2016 and Joe Biden won by 80,555 votes. The state’s 19 electoral college votes then propelled them to the White House. For Harris, a win in the state where American constitution was written is widely considered indispensable to get to 270 votes.

But within the swing state, Northampton county, of which Bethlehem is a town that once was home to the world’s second largest steel manufacturer, is considered the classic bellwether electoral region. It has voted for the person who became president all but thrice since 1912. In 2008 and 2012, Barack Obama carried the county, Trump took it in 2016, and Biden won in 2020. Whoever wins this county that covers a part of the Lehigh Valley in northeastern Pennsylvania has a pretty good chance of landing up at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington DC.

Urban centres are overwhelmingly Democratic; Harris’ campaign hopes to sweep these with high enough margins in Northampton to carry the county. And the mood of the elderly women did show overwhelming support for Harris. But if Rebecca offered the first sign of fracture, the other sign came from another woman, who refused to give her name, over a walk on Broad street.

“I won’t vote for Democrats ever for one reason: Gaza,” she said, when asked for her political preference. A senior citizen, she said she had voted for Joe Biden in 2020 because she did not want wars. “And he has presided over a genocide. He is complicit. We are complicit. He is a part of the same military industrial complex. And Kamala will be the same. I am a very angry former Democrat,” she said, pledging her allegiance to the uncommitted movement of voters who have sought to put pressure on Democrats to change course by threatening to withhold their vote.

The uncommitted voter said her husband was angry with her and her children, who shared the same views, for he said that their decision not to vote would only help Trump. And won’t Trump be worse for Gaza and Palestinians? “What can be worse for Gaza? He may be worse for America internally but how can we allow this in our names.” On Ukraine, she said she agreed with the Republican position. “That war is lost. Ukraine has lost one fifth of its country. All people want is peace. There was a window for diplomacy Vladimir [Putin] had opened up in February, but Biden didn’t get Volodymyr Zelensky to take that up”.

On the same street, at a store, Kailash, originally from Gujarat, was at the counter. A US citizen now, she said she didn’t follow the politics of the country too closely. “I follow news from India and like Narendra Modi. He is from Gujarat after all. He has done so much work.”

Asked if she would vote at all, she said she intended to but still hadn’t made up her mind. For her, Harris being of Indian origin wasn’t a factor. Was the US-India relationship a factor? “Yes. Trump is Modiji’s friend no? He went to India. Modiji came here. Harris’ mother is from there but she hasn’t even gone. Trump may be better for US-India relationship. I hear he will win anyway,” Kailash said, but asked that she not be identified with other details.

But even as Harris’ signs were visible on Easton and Bethlehem roads, the drive to Bath, a smaller town that proudly announced it was founded in 1737, and Moore Township, showed Trump’s grip over the rural landscape of Pennsylvania, the region which Republicans hope Trump will sweep to make up for any urban edge that Harris may have.

Trump-(JD) Vance signs populated almost every house, a Trump poster with his image with the raised fist after the assassination attempt against him in Butler adorned a military veteran’s house, and outside the Moore Township Recreation Centre, another poster that read ‘Trump Won: Save America’ found pride of place.

Residents of township had congregated at the recreation centre for a children’s football match. And this time, it was the Republican-leaning men of this belt who made it clear that they didn’t want to talk, with many making it clear you don’t talk politics at a football match.

But two women were willing.

Karen said that the whole community was overwhelmingly for Trump. “He is for us. For me the economy and cost of living are key issues. If Harris was so behind the scenes with Bideneconomics, then clearly it didn’t work. Everyone is living paycheck by paycheck and sometimes not even that. And why are they wasting money fighting foreign wars when I hear that we don’t have even money for hurricane relief, when we have so many poor people here at home?” Karen said, echoing a line of misinformation about Trump-fuelled hurricane relief resource-diversion conspiracy theory that had percolated down. She then turned to a younger woman standing next to her, and said, in a sign that they had previously had conversations on the issue, “I care about women rights too. I do. But not to pay for abortion when people are spending so much on IVF.”

Just like there was a fracture in urban area, there appeared to be a sign of fracture in this rural township. That younger woman standing next to Karen, quietly, without offering her name, said, “I don’t agree with her opinion. But I think the challenge for Harris is that people don’t know her and they haven’t done a good job communicating what she has actually done. But this area is largely for Trump.” It did appear that there was some issue, perhaps reproductive rights if that earlier allusion was an indication, that animated her, but she preferred to keep her opinion to herself.

And so here it was — the heterogeneity of opinions among 11 women voters in a tiny part of a state where public opinion has often aligned with a broader national mood when it comes to presidential history. There was something existential that both sides saw in the election. In their own ways, women voters were thinking of the questions of democracies and dictatorships, wars and democracy, sexuality and autonomy, economy and livelihoods. Their argument was propelled by fact and fiction, the latter often pushed by the Right. Generation, geography, and ideology played a complex role. And, depending on one’s own world view, voters behaved in ways that made sense, and sometimes didn’t. How it shapes the state’s electoral outcome — which will, of course, depend on many other factors — will only be known on result day.