Compared to the myriad of pundit predictions of a red wave instigated by soaring inflation and an economy gradually trudging towards a recession, the national results on election night were extremely underwhelming for the Republican Party. Other than in Florida where DeSantis won by a 20 percent margin, there were some key demographic groups that did not turn out as well as Republicans hoped and issues like abortion pushed suburbanites to support more liberal candidates. Moreover, a theme of candidate quality mattering emerged as several newcomers fell far short of their expectations. There is no place where this was more evident than in Pennsylvania.

Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman defeated television doctor Mehmet Oz in the pivotal race to determine retiring Republican Senator Pat Toomey’s successor. Fetterman received 50.9 percent of the vote and Oz received 46.7 percent as of November 10, with 97 percent of the vote in. This result was wider than expected, coming on the heels of a debate where Fetterman (fresh off of a stroke), had a hard time forming complete thoughts and sentences and creating sentient rebuttals to Oz’s claims (a former television personality himself).

Centrists and moderates, especially in suburbs in Philadelphia, Bucks, Chester, and Delaware Counties voted for Fetterman, which could be a rebuke of Trumpism or a sign that maybe the economy wasn’t the number one issue on these voters’ minds, but either way it signaled to the broader Republican Party that in a midterm election with quite an unpopular sitting President and soaring inflation that the Republican Party needs to make a change if they want to remain competitive in these higher population areas.

Part of the Fetterman campaign’s strategy was also to lower the losing margins in some of the redder, more working-class counties that had begun to shift towards Trump’s populism 2016 and 2020. As the former mayor of a steel town in western Pennsylvania, Fetterman was able to relate to some of these voters, including those in Westmoreland County (Latrobe, which is in a county east of Pittsburgh)—cutting the margin to less than 20 percent in Oz’s favor, compared to the roughly 28 percent that Trump won the county by in 2020. By appealing to these working-class voters by supporting unions and campaigning in steel towns in places such as the state’s southwest, he was able to close the gap against Oz enough for victory, while improving or maintaining strong margins in his favor in Democratic strongholds like Allegheny and Philadelphia counties. He also won Erie County, a blue-collar area of the state’s northwest along the Lake Erie coast, by around a 9 percent margin, a county that was basically a coin flip, one Trump actually won in 2016. 

Pennsylvania’s 2022 Senate race showed that their gradual red slide that has occurred over the past few elections might not be as profound as pundits thought with the current Republican candidates on the table, and serves as not only a bell weather but a warning to the Republican Party that they might need to change their approach if they want to win more moderate states like the commonwealth of Pennsylvania.