Some Democratic managers suggested that an endorsement from Puerto Rican saving performer Bad Bunny may have a greater impact on the election, especially in the crucial swing state of Pennsylvania, where about 300, 000 available Puerto Rican voters are located. In early September 2024, Taylor Swift posted a message to her 284 million followers on Instagram.
But when many Americans think of Pennsylvania’s deindustrialized northeast counties– including national bellwethers such as Northampton – they may consider more of Billy Joel’s” Allentown” than Poor Bunny’s” Una Velita“, a song about the aftermath of Hurricane Maria.
As a professor of history and the director of Latina/o Studies at Penn State, I believe that both the famous singer-songwriter and the Grammy-winning master of reggaeton and capture can contribute to the understanding of the social environment in the Keystone State, which is commonly believed to be the site of the election’s decisive outcome.
Closing down all businesses
In 1982, when Billy Joel recorded his melancholy song about employees left on because” they’re closing all the companies down”, he was generally describing the situation in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, 6 kilometers from Allentown.
The huge Bethlehem Steel Corp. began to lay off tens of thousands of employees as early as the 1970s. But Joel found that not much ballad with” Bethlehem”, so he used the neighboring town instead.
By the 1970s, Pennsylvania’s smaller commercial places such as Bethlehem, Hazleton, York, Reading and Lancaster were losing people and strength, and in many cases had been declining for years.
And for many Americans, especially those outside Pennsylvania, the image of these cities has n’t changed since. They also consider cities that are crowded by bright factory workers.
Growing Latino appearance
However, Allentown, Bethlehem, and another Pennsylvania’s older commercial locations have benefited in part from the arrival of new people, the majority Hispanic from Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. These visitors have assisted in restoring population growth, stabilizing housing industry, and supplying labour to fresh sectors like warehousing and transportation since the 1990s.
A higher Latino proportion than Los Angeles can now be found in Allentown at 54 %, which is higher than that of Los Angeles.
Lancaster and York, which are 40 % and 38 % Latino, respectively, have significantly larger proportions of Latinos than Chicago and New York. And Reading, with 69 % Latinos, is almost as Latino as Miami, at 70 %. Of course, those big towns have a much larger electorate than the general population.
Latinos are settling in these places for three reasons. They typically have a large number of warehousing and shipping jobs, cheap accommodation, and a sense of community, especially in comparison to New York City, where many of these new residents are immigrants from rather than Puerto Rico or the Dominican Republic.
Because of the labor movement, industrialized towns like Allentown, Bethlehem, and Reading have long been Democratic strongholds. And they continue to be, despite the fact that both union influence and Hispanic voter leanings have contributed to this.
In contrast to 34 % who say the same about the Republican Party, 60 % of Latino adults in the United States believe the Democratic Party represents the interests of “people like them” in a survey from Pew Research Center for 2022.
There were more than 1 million Latinos in Pennsylvania as of the 2020 U.S. census, which is the first time this number has increased to more than 1.1 million. Around 580, 000 eligible voters are included in this, despite the fact that Latinos typically register and cast ballots much less frequently than non-Latino white and black voters.
It’s undoubtedly oversimplified to attribute a state or national margin of victory to just one demographic, whether it was Latinos in 2024, office-park dads in the 1990s, or office-park dads in the 2000s.
But in a very close election like this one, small shifts in the margins among key groups, such as Latino voters in Pennsylvania, can determine who becomes president.
Puerto Ricans lean Democrat
The Latino vote includes a wide range of nationalities and identities, and partisan preferences greatly differ among them.
For example, Mexicans and Puerto Ricans have shown the greatest loyalty to the Democratic Party, while Cubans are famously the most Republican-leaning, followed by Venezuelans.
Moreover, Pennsylvania’s Hispanic population shows a very different distribution from the national scene. Across the U. S., people of Mexican ancestry account for about 60 % of all Latinos, Puerto Ricans compose 9.5 %, and Cubans, Dominicans and Salvadorans make up about 4 % each.
But in Pennsylvania, 53 % of Latinos are Puerto Rican and 13 % identify as Mexican. Meanwhile, 11 % say they are Dominican, and only 3 % Cuban.
And this brings us to Vega Baja, a small city on Puerto Rico’s northern coast, where Bad Bunny was born and raised. Puerto Rican citizens are citizens of the United States, but they are only able to cast ballots in US elections when they reside on the mainland. In November, Pennsylvanians could become crucial for their fate.
90, 000 undecided votes?
Latinos made up the overall coalition that helped Joe Biden win the state of his birth and become president in 2020.
Biden won about 75 % of Pennsylvania Latino votes to 25 % for Trump. Given that Biden won Pennsylvania by just 80, 000 votes in 2020, how the state’s 580, 000 Latino voters split their votes in 2024 could determine the next president.
This is demonstrated by the most recent survey of Latinos in nearby Northampton County. Among Latinos in the county, the September 2024 poll found that Harris was leading Trump 60 % to 25 %.
Although this was undoubtedly a strong Harris lead, the significance lay in the background.
Harris’s Latino vote share statewide in 2020 was not attained by the poll, and Trump’s Latino vote share was also falling short of his own 2020 Latino totals. About 90, 000 Latino voters may still be undecided, so by the numbers, they could be in a position to decide who to support and by what margin.
There has been a lot of discussion about whether Bad Bunny will sponsor the race because of this. Both campaigns are firmly convinced that influential Latinas and Latinos ‘ support might persuade influential people.
In addition to national support from stars such as America Ferrera and Rosario Dawson, the Harris campaign recently held a rally in Allentown featuring Emmy-winning actress Liza Colón-Zayas from” The Bear”, and” Hamilton” and” In the Heights” star Anthony Ramos – both of Puerto Rican descent.
Meanwhile, the Trump campaign staged Anuel AA and Justin Quiles, both of whom performed in support of the former president at his Johnstown rally in late August.
Latinos make their decisions based on a combination of economic interests, cultural values, and community sentiment, similar to how other voters do it. No one is certain whether a celebrity endorsement will make a difference, but campaigns will try anything to entice undecided voters to vote for their candidate.
The Democratic National Committee made the announcement on September 29 that it would spend more money on engaging Puerto Rican and other Latino voters in Pennsylvania in the weeks leading up to Election Day.
The Southwest still has the highest percentage of Hispanic voters, but eastern Pennsylvania, which is where the majority of Latina and Latino voters may live.
A. K. Sandoval-Strausz is professor of history, Penn State
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