A blue tsunami uprooted the remaining red strongholds in Philadelphia’s suburbs.
Democrats on Tuesday ousted all Republicans from the Pennsylvania legislature in Chester, Delaware and Montgomery counties for the first time ever, according to unofficial results. There are still two Republicans in the state House in Bucks County.
“It shakes up not just politics here in the southeast but the ramifications statewide is just enormous,” said John Kennedy, a political science professor at West Chester University.
Conventional wisdom holds that the party in power tends to lose in the midterms. Combine that with an even more unfavorable political environment for GOP incumbents nationwide and rising costs at the pump due in part to an unpopular war in Iran and those are ruinous ingredients.
Kennedy called the result a “disaster for Republicans.”
Democrats in Philadelphia’s highly coveted collar counties made historic gains beyond their wildest dreams, achieving a trifecta in Harrisburg by flipping seats in the state House and Senate once thought to be out of reach.
“I think you had a lot of energized Democrats who were bound and determined to send a message to Washington, D.C., even if that meant taking it out on local legislators at the state level,” Chester County Commissioner Eric Roe, a Republican, said. “Meanwhile, you had a lot of Republicans who may have stayed home rather than coming out to vote.”
