N.E. Brigand wrote: ↑Fri Oct 25, 2024 6:45 am
Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, where Allentown is located, is about an hour north of Philadelphia. Northampton County is just to the east, along the Delaware River that separates Pennsylvania from New Jersey. They have been considered bellwethers for the state as a whole. Carbon County is north of these two. It is reliably Republican. In 2020, Joe Biden led Donald Trump 53.2%-45.6% in Lehigh Co., 49.8%-49.1% in Northampton Co., while Donald Trump won 65.4%-33.3% in Carbon Co. A
new poll finds Kamala Harris leading Trump 52%-45% in Lehigh (slightly behind Biden),
41%-47% in Northampton (notably ahead of Biden), and losing to Trump 63%-37% in Carbon (also notably ahead of Biden). Here's hoping those numbers hold up!
Sorry, as you may have guessed (or confirmed for yourself if you followed the link), what I've bolded above was a typo. This poll found Harris leading Trump
51% to 47% in Northampton County, which is a three-point improvement on Biden's 2020 result in that bellwether county.
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Meanwhile, the
Washington Post has
announced that the paper will be "returning to our roots" and not endorsing a presidential candidate this year.
That is simply
cowardice, as Marty Barron, the
Post's former editor notes. It's fine for a newspaper not to make endorsements, but if you only change a policy you've had since 1976, that needs to be done well in advance of the election so it doesn't look like you're bowing to pressure. The
Post's owner, Jeff Bezos, is afraid Trump will win and use regulatory power to punish Amazon, which he also owns.
Edited to emphasize how full of shit the chief editor's explanation is. He says that until 1976, the paper had a long-standing policy of not endorsing that it only broke once, in 1952, due to the extraordinary circumstances of that year. But both of the leading candidates, Dwight Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson, were completely normal! Similarly they say that the decision to begin endorsing in 1976 was driven by circumstances, but again the candidates, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, were both mainstream political figures.
Edited again to add
this link to the
Post's own reporting on this story.