Pennsylvania's electoral votes in U.S. presidential elections 1789-2020

Pennsylvania has taken part in every U.S. presidential election, correctly voting for the nationwide winner in 47 out of 59 elections, giving a success rate of eighty percent. Since 1828, Pennsylvania has voted for the Democratic nominee in twenty elections, and the Republican Party's nominee in 26 elections (including all but one elections from 1860 to 1932). The only time where Pennsylvania did not vote for a major party candidate was in 1912, where it granted its 38 electoral votes to Theodore Roosevelt, who was running as the candidate of the newly-formed Progressive Party. After voting Democrat in all elections between 1992 and 2012, Pennsylvania voted red in 2016, as Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton by less than one percent of the popular vote. In 2020, Joe Biden flipped Pennsylvania blue again by 1.2 percent of the popular vote. Pennsylvania proved to be the decisive state in the week following the 2020 election, as the returns of mail in ballots gradually swung the result in Biden's favor, following a strong early showing from Donald Trump; the development of these results eventually signaled that Joe Biden had (provisionally) obtained the 270 electoral votes needed to win the election, leading all major news outlets to declare him the winner.

Pennsylvanians in office

Prior to the 2020 election, James Buchanan is the only U.S. president to have been born in the Keystone State. Several other major party nominees have been born in Pennsylvania, including three of the losing candidates who ran between 1864 and 1884. Although he is more commonly associated with Delaware, Joe Biden's victory in 2020 made him the the second U.S. president to have been born in Pennsylvania, having spent the first ten years of his life in Scranton. Biden will, most likely, want to be remembered more favorably than Buchanan, who is consistently ranked as the worst U.S. president in history.

Weakening influence

From 1804 until 1964, Pennsylvania had the second-highest allocation of electoral votes in every U.S. presidential election (usually behind New York), with the number peaking at 38 electoral votes between 1912 and 1928. Since then, Pennsylvania's allocation of electoral votes has fallen gradually, and is expected to be just 19 votes in the 2024 election; half of what it was one century previously. The reason for this drop in electoral votes is due Pennsylvanians migrating to other parts of the country, while growing populations across the border and Midwestern states has seen a shift in population distribution across the country. Nonetheless, with 19 electoral votes, Pennsylvania is likely to remain one of the most valuable battleground states in future elections.