This County in Pennsylvania Shaped America and Could Determine the Next President

BETHLEHEM, Pa.—Nestled in the heart of eastern Pennsylvania is one of two state counties that has been a bellwether in the last four presidential elections, and may decide who controls the White House next year.

Northampton County, home of the former Bethlehem Steel plant—once the world’s largest producer of steel—is one of two once-blue counties in the Keystone State, along with Erie County, that then-candidate Donald Trump flipped in 2016 before moving back to the Democrats in 2020.

Now considered a swing county in the largest battleground state, Northampton is seeing significant attention this year. Democrats visited the county in September, Trump stopped repeatedly in the larger Lehigh Valley area, and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has been to Bethlehem twice recently.

The attention underscores how important the county will be in determining the winning presidential candidate in Pennsylvania and, by extension, the White House.

“These fluctuations between Donald Trump and Joe Biden and Barack Obama, I think, are indicative of the fact that we truly are a true bellwether,” Northampton County GOP Chair Glenn Geissinger told The Epoch Times.

“We reflect the national feel as well as that of the Commonwealth pretty well, because our demographics accurately reflect the cross-section of everybody. We [also] have a good, solid portion of independents.”

Related Stories

Part of that political diversity comes from the region’s decades-long evolution.

Industrialization “was a sort of a slam dunk for the Democrats,” Tony Iannelli, president and CEO of the Lehigh Valley Chamber of Commerce, told The Epoch Times. “There’s still a fair amount of labor here.”

When manufacturing went offshore in the mid-1990s, Iannelli says the area “hit a wall “ but has since bounced back.

“The bad times literally set us up for the good times,” he said. Health care, life sciences, sports, and other industries are flooding into the area, building a bustling tourism industry.

Now “softer R” or moderate Republicans are moving into the area from neighboring New York and New Jersey, Geissinger said, adding to the area’s political diversity.

“We’ve cut the margin significantly over time … and we’ve also seen an increase in the number of independent voters,” Geissinger said.

“What Donald Trump did is he brought a populist message to the Republican Party, and that populist message has paid off for him,” he added, especially in appealing to working-class voters.

President Joe Biden, in Geissinger’s view, won over older blue-collar voters in 2020 because of his connections to Scranton, where he was born and raised.

“We’re not going to experience that this time around with Kamala Harris. It’s just not going to happen,” he said.

The chairman acknowledged that Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, has advantages with younger, college-educated groups, but is confident of Trump’s chances this year.

“[Trump has] made inroads with blue-collar … Democrats, and that’s going to pull him over significantly in Northampton County,” Geissinger said.

The Epoch Times contacted the Northampton County Democratic Party but did not receive a response by press time.

“This race is a toss-up. So it tells me that we’re still kind of a purple state in the sense the urban areas … tend to be more Democratic, and then our outlying regions tend to be Republican,” Iannelli said.

County Demographics

The cities of Bethlehem and Easton toward the south near Bucks County have been traditionally blue but Pennsylvania’s rural, agricultural areas to the north are largely Republican, Geissinger said.

“Certainly, we would have the traditional Democrat base that will still be there in the cities, just as we have the traditional Republican base that will be in the rural areas,” he…