BUCKS COUNTY, Pa.—Around 1 a.m. on Wednesday morning, just as the hundred or so remaining attendees at the Republican watch party in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, were starting to slump in their chairs, gasps spread through the room like wildfire. Young men stood up with their fingers thrust toward a giant screen of Fox News blaring the message: “Projection: Trump will win Pennsylvania.”
“I am over the moon,” said Betsy Cross, a 60-year-old campaign volunteer, beaming—even though she’d been up since before sunrise to help place Donald Trump signs outside of polling places. “I’m crying, I’m so happy.”
Like nearly every county in the state, Bucks County—dubbed the “swingiest of all swing counties in the swingiest of all swing states” by Democratic governor Josh Shapiro—shifted right Tuesday night. It’s the purplest county of the ones that surround Philadelphia, but it hasn’t gone red since George H.W. Bush took the county in 1988. But lately, signs of change have been brewing. This summer, the number of registered Republicans in the county surpassed that of Democrats for the first time in nearly two decades.
As analysts have warned for months now, it all came down to less than a thousand votes in Bucks County, with Trump nabbing it by about one-tenth of a percentage point. Just like that, Pennsylvania, which many outlets had previously expected could take days to count, rang out a decisive victory for Trump, handing him the state by less than two percentage points—more than double his margin the last time he won Pennsylvania in 2016. He grew his popularity with nearly every kind of voter here, including men under 30, independents, and Latinos, with whom he increased his margin by 30 points compared to 2020. Suddenly, the race was over, with Fox News updating its chyron to read in glittering gold letters, “Trump elected 47th president.”
Justine Zaremba, a 37-year-old Bucks County native, cupped her hands over her mouth, holding back tears.
“I’m elated, like a huge weight just lifted off of my shoulders,” she said as chants of “U-S-A” spread throughout the Newtown Athletic Club, the venue that hosted the event.
Earlier in the night, shortly after polls closed in the state, she told me that the future of her family depended on the election results.
“I never in a million years thought that I would be trying to convince myself not to have kids so that I can live with the fact that maybe I can’t afford them,” she told me. “But that’s the reality.”
As a real estate agent and part-time event planner, she says she hardly makes enough to cover her groceries. Even a box of Midol, she says, costs $16 now, even though only a few months ago she remembers it being more like $11.
“The price of everything has just skyrocketed,” she said. “I’d love to have a child, but if Kamala [Harris] is elected, that will just be the nail in the coffin.”
Debbie Perkiss, who said she was a Democrat her “whole life” until Trump entered the scene in 2016, told me the Republicans are the “old-fashioned Democrats” now.
“It used to be about the working class,” Perkiss, a 60-year-old Jewish mother, said about the left of her youth. “But that was the Democratic Party from years ago. Now it’s changed, and the whole Biden-Harris policy is completely backward. Why are we buying oil from other countries when we have it ourselves?”
She added that the border is her “number one” issue, the economy is her second, and that her third is this: “We should be oil-independent, always.” She believes tapping into our own domestic oil supply will “change everything” in the fight against rising grocery store prices and energy costs, both of which she said are now costing her “close to double” than under Trump.
Pasquale O’Neill, a 36-year-old antiques dealer, told me that he, too, used to be a Democrat until Trump changed his mind in 2016.
“I grew up under the impression that the Democrats helped the poor people and the Republicans only helped the rich and the wealthy,” said O’Neill, who says he “grew up very poor.” “So I figured if I voted Democrat, it would help me as a person coming out of poverty.”
He says he began to “lose hope” in the party under Obama, who he points out the “divisive” Black Lives Matter Movement formed under.
“That was a movement that divided us more than it brought us together, and I don’t feel like he did enough to stop that,” he shrugged.
While supporting Trump for the past eight years in private, O’Neill says he’d only recently started wearing a MAGA hat in public.
“I feel less embarrassed now,” he said. “I just don’t care anymore. I’m not ashamed. Like, if someone is willing to stand up there and take a bullet for the country, and you’re not willing to put on a hat or show up for that person, then how do you even call yourself an American?”
After Fox News called the race, I found Zaremba, the woman resting her family planning on the election results, in the swarm of Trump supporters, some of whom had formed a conga line while others just hugged in silence. She told me this felt like “a sign” to have kids.
“I’m relieved,” she said. ”Because Trump’s going to fix it. He’s going to get us back to where we need to be.”
Olivia Reingold is a field reporter at The Free Press. Follow her on X @Olivia_Reingold, and read her piece “Inside the Biden Bubble.”
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