My hometown is York, PA. York is a small city, about 45,000 people, that is part of a larger metro area that totals about 1.2 million people and includes York, Harrisburg, and Lancaster.

These are small cities. Harrisburg is the state capital, and if you think Lancaster is nothing but rolling Amish farms, the local tourist trade has succeeded in bullshitting you. All of them are diverse little enclaves, with populations of Black, Hispanic, and Asian folks. In fact, growing up in my old neighborhood I had friends who were Black, and also friends born in Puerto Rico, Vietnam, and Greece.

This diversity also extends politically to making these small cities heavily Democratic. The same goes for other small cities, like Reading, Wilkes-Barre, Scranton, Johnstown, Erie, State College, and Allentown.

So, James Carville’s famous quote about Pennsylvania being Pittsburgh and Philly and everything in between is Alabama was true only to a certain extent. The region between those major metro areas is quite vast, quite beautiful, quite rural, and also quite red politically.

But, within that Red Sea of Pennsylvania are the Blue Islands like York, Reading, etc. And these places tend to go to the Dems. In fact, the map that makes up the header image of this post shows results from the 2020 election in York County.

Keep in mind, while these small cities have a suburban collar like any other city, beyond that is a fair amount of less-dense population, and in each of those little metros, there are thousands of votes for Harris. This makes get-out-the-vote efforts in these small cities all that much more important. Where I currently live, a small town 10 miles from State College, is roughly 65-35 Trump. But State College itself, home of Penn State, is like any university town in that it’s pretty liberal. Gotta squeeze out as many votes as you can.

This is really important in this election because Pennsylvania is so close, and a lot of attention is being foisted upon my home state because quite literally, we could decide the election and in turn, save democracy.

No pressure!

Therefore, you will hear a lot about the collar counties around Philly, about getting turnout high in Philly itself, about Allegheny County where Pittsburgh is, and so on. These truly are important places for the Dems and the Harris campaign to focus efforts. However, we hear relatively little about those enclaves of blue votes. While it is true that turnout is generally lower in these urban areas, getting people to vote would be of interest to anyone trying to win Pennsylvania, whether that is for Pennsylvania’s electoral votes or senate.

While I can’t give you the rundown of how voting went in York in 2020 due to how it is broken down into precincts, I can say that the 13th Precinct, where I grew up, went 455-147 for Biden over Trump, with roughly 55% turnout, well below the 77% turnout for registered voters in the state overall. Again, just one precinct, but that should give you an idea of how important these votes are in a close election.

I don’t have the numbers in front of me but it wouldn’t be surprising if the same was true in other battleground states, that there are Democratic small city islands in the MAGA sea. These unsung little cities, which oh-by-the-way includes Springfield, Ohio, could help decide an election.

The last word goes to Bruce Springsteen.