Donald Trump has expressed smug confidence that he will hold onto a rapidly growing Pennsylvania county he easily won in 2020 — so much so that some of his canvassers say he's taken his foot off the gas.
In Lancaster County, Trump took 57 percent of the vote in 2020 against Joe Biden's 41 percent. He got more votes there than in the more populous Philadelphia County. This time both Trump and Kamala Harris have invested heavily in one of the fastest-growing areas in the must-win state, reported NOTUS.
“The turnout in Lancaster is incredibly important to a win in Pennsylvania and, of course, the president knows this. Both teams know this,” said GOP Rep. Lloyd Smucker. “They’ve been spending a lot of time on the ground here.”
Five active volunteers told the website that Trump's operation had 100 to 200 regular volunteers in the county — but a Trump Force 47 captain who had volunteered for his campaigns in the past said the operation this year was far more relaxed.
“Back in 2020, they made us knock on thousands of doors," said Joyce Hottenstein. "But this time, I just have to knock on a few and I get a reward. It’s so much more simple."
Trump surrogates Peter Navarro, Stephen Miller and Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) are encouraging fellow Republicans to each get 10 voters to the polls, while the candidate's message in the county Sunday was a bit more unceremonious: “If you don’t vote, you’re stupid," he said.
Some insiders are privately expressing concern about Trump's ability to stay on message, but his allies doubt there's anything he can say at this point to lose his supporters.
“Disastrous, but it doesn’t matter at this point,” said one GOP lawmaker about his closing message. “He is who he is. The election is already decided in my opinion.”
While some Trump volunteers are seemingly doing the bare minimum, Democrats knocked on a record 27,000 doors on Saturday alone, and they're hoping demographic changes could help cut into the former president's statewide total, even if Harris doesn't win Lancaster County.
“The most likely scenario is that we don’t flip the county and don’t get more than 50 percent of the vote,” said Stella Sexton, vice chair of the Lancaster County Democrats. “But we will get a lot more votes out of the county than we did last time, and it’s going to cut into his margin a lot.”
The county has seen thousands of younger voters move to the area from Philadelphia since 2020 with the rise in remote work, but Republicans remain confident the once rural and deeply red area is safe for Trump.
“We serve as kind of the firewall, if you will,” former county GOP Chairman Dave Dumeyer said. “They don’t have to worry about Lancaster, they know who’s going to take it. It’s just, is it going to be enough to offset some other areas?”
Democrats are eying 2027 as the target for flipping the county, thanks to what they call "the natural demographic change" in the area, but Republicans doubt that.
“This is a conservative county," said GOP county commissioner Ray D’Agostino. "It always has been, and as far as I’m concerned, it always will be."