Democrats, once supreme in Pittsburgh region, now overtaken by GOP

The Southwestern Pennsylvania pendulum has shifted.

Democrats once held an iron grip on the eight-­county Greater Pittsburgh region during the heyday of steel, but that clutch loosened once the mills collapsed, allowing Republicans increasingly to win over more yinzers as the decades passed.

Lew Irwin, a 59-year-old political science professor at Duquesne University, has seen the political shift firsthand.

“A pretty remarkable transformation that we have seen in my lifetime,” said Irwin, who grew up in Washington County, where his father worked in a steel mill. “We are in the middle of this. We don’t know where it is going to end up.”

Other local political science and campaign experts who spoke with TribLive agree: Some signs point to continuing Republican gains across Southwestern Pennsylvania, but others reflect countercurrents boosting Democrats in former Republican strongholds.

It’s not certain which way Pittsburgh-area voters will move: toward Republicans and the politics of former President Donald Trump, or toward Democrats, led by Vice President Kamala Harris.

Election Day will tell us a lot, said Irwin.

“When one side loses enough elections,” Irwin said, “then they will change their message.”

Former Dem powerhouse

Starting in the 1930s during President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal era, Democrats’ prowess at organizing labor unions in the mills, mines and manufacturing centers that proliferated across Southwestern Pennsylvania would regularly win them the support of the Pittsburgh metro area.

There were a few exceptions. Republican Dwight Eisenhower won in the traditional Democratic stronghold in 1956, and Richard Nixon captured it in 1972, when he won every state but Massachusetts. But from 1932 through 2008, Democrats won the Pittsburgh metro area 18 out of 20 presidential elections.

The Pittsburgh metro area includes Allegheny, Armstrong, Beaver, Butler, Fayette, Lawrence, Washington and Westmoreland counties.

Irwin said 35% of Pittsburgh-area households were union families by the 1950s.

Lara Putnam, a political historian at the University of Pittsburgh, said those households were concentrated in the Mon Valley, Beaver County and industrial sections of Allegheny County along the rivers.

“This union loyalty tied people into a strong Democratic identity through the 1990s,” Putnam said.

A shift begins

Once the steel industry collapsed in the late 1970s, though, voting patterns started to change. Republicans began to gain ground on Democrats, with a strong shift in the 1996 presidential election, and then steadily all the way up to 2016.

Irwin said the collapse of the steel industry and decline of union households further eroded Democrats’ power in Pittsburgh. By the 1980s, union membership dropped to 25%, said Irwin.

The effect of those two factors on Pittsburgh-area politics lagged, taking another decade to show up at the ballot box.

In the 1988 presidential contest, Democrats won the Pittsburgh metro area by nearly 19 percentage points, Allegheny County by 20 points and Westmoreland County by 11 points.

It wasn’t until 2000 that Democrats’ margins shrank to single digits, beating Republicans by only 8 points. Westmoreland County voted for Republicans that year by more than 5 points, flipping to the GOP for the first time in 28 years.

Republican rebound

Conservatives were smelling victory in the 2000s.

By 2004, the GOP had shrunk Democrats’ Pittsburgh metro area margin down to just 4 percentage points.

Republican campaign consultant Ben Wren started to work in Westmoreland County in 2007.

Democrats and Barack Obama barely held off Republicans in 2008, eking out a victory in the region by just over 2 percentage points thanks in large part to an urban surge in Allegheny County.

Democrats held on, but lost every county in the Pittsburgh metro area except Allegheny. Republicans finally flipped Beaver, Fayette and Washington after coming close for years.

Wren said 2008 saw some breakthroughs on down-ballot races, with state Sens. Kim Ward, R-Hempfield, and Elder Vogel, R-New Sewickley, winning close contests in formerly Democratic territory in Westmoreland and Beaver counties, respectively.

Now, Wren noted, Ward, the Senate president pro tempore and highest-ranking Republican in Harrisburg, is running unopposed this year.

In 2012, Republicans reclaimed the Pittsburgh region thanks to voters in rural counties sprinting away from Democrats. The GOP won the metro area that year by 1.5 points.

They haven’t looked back.

Trump turbocharged rural turnout in 2016. That, combined with a high third-party vote count that ate into Democrats’ margins, allowed Republicans to win the Pittsburgh metro area by over 5 points, the most since 1972.

Wren said that momentum has only made it easier for former Democrats in places like the Mon Valley and other rural areas to join the GOP.

“When they started to meet some of these Republicans, the ones they had been raised to believe were evil, they started to change their minds,” Wren said. “They got a permission structure to vote for Republicans.”

Trading bases

While rural Southwestern Pennsylvania counties, led by Westmoreland County, have rushed toward Republicans, suburban parts of Allegheny County have moved toward Democrats.

Communities in Allegheny County’s North Hills were the strongest Republican base for decades, but President Joe Biden made massive inroads in Franklin Park, Marshall, McCandless and Hampton.

That trend has continued. Democrats have gained control of local municipal governments, and high-profile party pols like Gov. Josh Shapiro and U.S. Sen. John Fetterman increased Biden’s margins there in 2022.

“The two parties have kind of traded bases a little bit,” Wren said.

Irwin said once Pittsburgh’s economy shifted from heavy industry toward education, health care and technology, the parties started to realign.

“The Democratic Party started to evolve and appeal to more educated voters, while Republicans have been very successful at co-opting the social conservatism of the more working-class workforce,” Irwin said.

Now, Pittsburgh and its well-off suburbs are providing the base of the region’s Democratic votes.

In 2020, they were crucial in helping Democrats claw back some ground on Republicans. Democrats lost the region by about 3 points, about 2.5 points better than in 2016.

Biden also performed historically well in Allegheny County, winning the region’s largest county by more than 20 points, a feat that has been accomplished by only a small number of Democratic presidential candidates.

The question remains, though: Where does the region’s politics move from here?

Republicans believe there is room to grow in rural and former industrial areas, while Democrats see opportunity in fast-growing suburbs, even places like Cranberry, Murrysville and Peters Township that go beyond Allegheny County’s borders, according to Putnam, the Pitt historian.

The future growth of Pittsburgh’s workforce might also play a part, she said.

Steelworkers used to be the political powerhouse of Pittsburgh, but now it’s health care workers, she said.

Doctors, as a highly educated voting bloc, have been moving toward Democrats. Nurses have been growing their union numbers, particularly with SEIU Healthcare, a progressive ally of Democrats.

Putnam said it’s still unclear how the region’s other, much more numerous health care workers like nonunionized nurses, orderlies and home health care aides will move politically.

“It is an open question,” Putnam said, “whether they are going to join the unions trying to build a new political movement or shift towards social conservatism and economic protectionism of Trump.”