Donald Trump didn’t need to win Monroe County to win Pennsylvania, but he did it anyway.
The wooded county in Northeast Pennsylvania has resisted the swingy nature of the commonwealth over the past two decades, voting Democratic in all but a handful of general election contests since 2006. But after a seven-point rightward shift — the largest of any Pennsylvania county this cycle — some say Monroe County could be in play for years to come.
“The Republican vote is stronger than ever,” said Pennsylvania GOP strategist Charlie Gerow. “That’s seen in Monroe County, but it’s seen throughout the state.”
Except in state senate races, Monroe County hasn’t voted for a Republican during a general election since 2010. While it has generally voted well to the left of the commonwealth since then, Republicans have occasionally carried Monroe during off-year elections and still control two of the seven countywide offices.
The Democratic winning streak ended on Nov, 5, when Republicans took a plurality of the county’s votes in all but the Senate race, which incumbent Democratic Sen. Bob Casey Jr. carried by a point despite losing statewide to Dave McCormick, a former hedge fund manager. Weak showings also led to the defeat of the two Democrats representing Monroe County in the U.S. House.
“You don’t have to move all that much to flip a county in a place like Monroe, because the margins over the last few elections were very close,” said Chris Borick, the director of the Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion.
With a population half the size of perennial bellwether Northampton, Monroe’s margins could shift easily, said Berwood Yost, the director of the Franklin & Marshall Poll. Joe Biden’s six-point victory in Monroe last cycle amounted to 5,000 votes.
“I’m not really willing to make any bets at this point about how that will go,” Yost said, of future election outcomes.
The polling place in Mount Pocono on Election Day. (Credit: Trebor Maitin)
Hillary Clinton bested Trump in Monroe County by 0.79 points in 2016, though she lost statewide. This year, Trump won by an almost identical margin, less than a point short of his statewide margin.
The county’s swing toward Republicans reflected statewide and regional trends. Republicans registered 2.4 times more voters than Democrats in both the county and the commonwealth over the past year, though Democrats in both cases still have an edge in total registrations. Northeast Pennsylvania had the strongest shift toward Republicans of any region in the commonwealth in the election, which Borick and Yost attributed in part to the Democratic ticket losing Biden’s home-field advantage.
Borick also said economic pressures, a strong issue for Republicans this year, might have especially impacted Monroe’s large commuter community — Monroe County has some of the longest commute times in the country.
“Do I know exactly how that interaction plays out? No, but I think it’s worthy of thinking about,” he said.
Demographic trends also mimicked those statewide. Trump made big gains in communities of color, and of the four Pennsylvania counties that flipped red this year, Monroe has the greatest proportion of nonwhite residents at 35%.
Borick said three of the counties — Monroe, Northampton and Bucks — might emerge as a swing bloc along the Delaware River despite their demographic differences.
“Republicans are going to take a very, very close look at the Delaware River corridor,” said Gerow, the strategist.
Democrats held their one-seat state house majority despite the headwinds, which Yost credited to localized campaigns. State Rep. Tarah Probst, the lone Democrat in the county to improve on last cycle’s margins, said Democrats could learn from running on local issues.
“All they talked about was democracy, which, believe me, is very, very important,” Probst said of national Democrats. “But they didn’t talk enough about what they actually did for working people and how much worse it would have been if they didn’t pass some of the legislation that they did.”
Explore the graphics below for a deeper dive into Monroe County.
This is Monroe County. A rural county in Northeast Pennsylvania, Monroe has been stubbornly liberal for much of the current century thanks largely to a post-9/11 boom of New York City transplants. Democrats have won it in nearly every general election contest since 2006.
Joe Biden, a Democrat born in neighboring Lackawanna County, carried Monroe by six points in 2020.
In 2020, Democrats did best in municipalities in the northwest and east, which have higher populations and greater proportions of nonwhite people.
Turnout increased in most areas from 2020 to 2024, but the gains were most pronounced in the east and south. Southern Monroe County, overwhelmingly white and rich in farmland, is a Republican stronghold.
But higher turnout in both Democratic and Republican areas did not cancel each other out. Instead, Republicans made their strongest gains where turnout increased the most: white, conservative areas in the south and less-white liberal areas in the east, along the Delaware River.
All of that leads to the 2024 election results. Donald Trump carried Monroe County by a little less than one point, according to returns from the county elections office. Three of the four other Republicans running statewide races won the county by similar margins.