Three Takeaways From the Pennsylvania Primaries

With the 2024 primary season entering the homestretch — and the presidential matchup already set — hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvanians cast their ballots Tuesday in Senate and House contests as well as for president and local races.

President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, who had been heading toward a 2020 rematch for months before securing their parties’ nominations in March, scored overwhelming victories in their primaries, facing opponents who had long since dropped out of the race. But Nikki Haley, Trump’s former rival in the Republican primaries, still took more than 155,000 votes across the state. That exceeds the margin of 81,660 votes by which Biden won the state in the 2020 election.

In the past two weeks, Biden has had the campaign trail largely to himself while Trump sits in a New York City courtroom for a felony criminal trial related to a 2016 campaign sex scandal cover-up. Wednesday, however, is a day off from the proceedings.

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Biden plans to deliver remarks Wednesday at a conference for North America’s Building Trades Unions, an umbrella labor group. Vice President Kamala Harris will be in New York on Wednesday to record an interview with Drew Barrymore for her television talk show. On Thursday, Biden will head to Syracuse, New York, for a White House event, while Trump will head back to court.

In Pennsylvania on Tuesday, a long-awaited Senate matchup was officially set, as David McCormick and Sen. Bob Casey won their uncontested primaries.

And Rep. Summer Lee, a progressive first-term Democrat, fended off a moderate challenger who had opposed her criticism of Israel’s war in the Gaza Strip. While Biden has faced protest votes in a number of states, Lee’s race was one of the first down-ballot tests of where Democrats stand on the war.

Here are three takeaways.

‘Scranton Joe’ Biden sails to victory. Trump meets resistance from Haley holdouts.

Biden, who grew up in Scranton, Pennsylvania, took 93% of the vote in the Democratic primary, scoring a yawning lead in a key battleground state. Rep. Dean Phillips, who was on the ballot but dropped out of the race last month, got nearly 7% of the vote.

Trump also notched a decisive primary victory, but many Republican voters continued to express their discontent with the former president. At least 155,000 registered Republican voters cast ballots for Haley, who had been Trump’s chief rival in the primaries before dropping out of the race last month.

Haley, the former South Carolina governor, did not endorse Trump in exiting the race, and the Pennsylvania vote reflected his continuing difficulties in wooing her supporters and in fully winning over the Republican electorate. Haley won small but significant protest votes this month in GOP primaries in Wisconsin, Rhode Island, Connecticut and New York, capturing at least 10% of the vote in each state.

Trump has shown little interest in winning Haley’s endorsement and has made few attempts to reach out to her supporters. It remains unclear whether his decision to bypass any reconciliation with Haley will matter as November approaches.

The results Tuesday suggest that Biden is on surer footing with the Democratic base in Pennsylvania compared with other battleground states, such as Michigan, where the president has faced significant numbers of protest votes focusing on his handling of the war in the Gaza Strip.

The Haley vote suggests Trump may have some work to do to bring her voters back to his side in the fall.

A progressive Democrat fended off a challenge that focused on her criticism of Israel’s military campaign.

Lee, a first-term progressive Democrat who represents a Pittsburgh-area district, was an early critic of Israel’s war in Gaza, where about 34,000 people have died since the war began six months ago. Lee’s stances against Israel’s military campaign drew a primary challenge from Bhavini Patel, a moderate Democrat who opposed Lee’s approach on the war.

But Lee emerged victorious, suggesting that public sentiment on the war, particularly among Democrats, has shifted significantly against Israel in the six months since the war began.

Trump shut McCormick out of his first Senate run. Now they share the Republican ticket.

McCormick won an unopposed Republican primary for Senate in Pennsylvania, pitting him against Casey, the Democratic incumbent. While McCormick had no rivals this time around, his victory represents something of a redemption arc after his defeat in his first Senate primary run in the state in 2022.

He is positioned with the best chance yet for Republicans to unseat Casey, an 18-year incumbent who has previously sailed to reelection. He defeated his previous Republican opponent in 2018 by 13 points, and an analysis by the Cook Political Report rates the race as leaning toward the Democrats.

Trump helped sink McCormick’s first run when he backed a rival candidate, celebrity physician Dr. Mehmet Oz. In a race that hung on a knife’s edge, Trump’s backing of Oz, and his scorching attacks against McCormick, proved decisive — Oz eked out a win by fewer than 1,000 votes.

McCormick has earned the endorsement of Trump for the coming battle against Casey, and they will share adjoining places at the top of Pennsylvania’s ballot in November.

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