The Biden Campaign’s Plan to Win Pennsylvania on the Margins

The president’s campaign is putting more resources earlier than ever before into counties he’ll almost certainly lose. Democrats say there’s a logic to it.

Joe Biden PA
Matt Rourke/AP

Shari Jacobson crunched the numbers: Democrats in Union County, Pennsylvania make up just .002% of registered Democrats across the state.

Tucked in central Pennsylvania about an hour and a half up the road from Harrisburg, it’s a county that has never chosen a Democratic presidential candidate. Republicans outnumber Democrats nearly 2-1. In short, President Joe Biden has a near-zero chance of winning there.

Despite all of that, Union County is the site of one of two dozen coordinated campaign centers the Biden campaign has opened in the last month in a statewide effort to close the gaps in exurban and rural parts of Pennsylvania that will no doubt go for former President Donald Trump.