BETHLEHEM, Pa. — As the dust settled on a dominant showing by Republicans in Tuesday's election, Northampton County solidified its reputation as a presidential prognosticator.
Since the dawn of the 20th century, Northampton County voters have backed the winning candidate all but three times, missing only on Hubert Humphrey in 1968, Al Gore in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004.
It is one of a handful of counties in the country that showed up for Democrat Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, Republican Donald Trump in 2016, Democrat Joe Biden in 2020 and Trump again in 2024.
Unofficial results released by the Northampton County elections office show Trump defeated Vice President Kamala Harris by 3,880 votes in the county, a little over 2 percentage points. That stands in contrast to 2020 when Trump lost to Biden by 1,223 votes, or about 0.72% of the vote.
The local results in the last two presidential elections are in line with Pennsylvania's from the past two elections. Biden won the Keystone State in 2020 by just over 1 percentage point, while Trump defeated Harris statewide Tuesday by 2 percentage points.
Northampton County by the numbers
A breakdown of Northampton County voting precincts doesn't show any huge shifts in the local electorate so much as gradual improvements for the president-elect nearly everywhere.
The only two municipalities to flip were Palmer Township and Hellertown; Trump went from losing each of them by about 1% point to winning both by about 1% point.
"That is the election in a nutshell — marginal. Of course, that adds up. It's an unquestionably great election for Republicans, but the margins are not overwhelming."Christopher Borick, Muhlenberg College political science professor
That trend held true in both crimson red townships and deep blue cities. Trump improved his margin of victory in Lehigh Township from 66% in 2020 to 67.1% in 2024. In Bethlehem, he narrowed his defeat to 7,891 votes instead of the steeper 8,925 votes he lost by in 2020.
"That is the election in a nutshell — marginal," said Christopher Borick, a Muhlenberg College political science professor. "Of course, that adds up. It's an unquestionably great election for Republicans, but the margins are not overwhelming."
The same appeared to hold true for Republicans across the ballot.
Republican Dave McCormick edged out Democratic incumbent Bob Casey in the U.S. Senate race in Northampton County; the Associated Press has called the race for McCormick, though the results are so close it may trigger an automatic recount.
Incumbent Democrat Susan Wild managed to carry Northampton County by about 300 votes in the race for Pennsylvania's 7th Congressional District. However, the size of her victory here and in Lehigh County was washed out by Carbon County, where Republican challenger Ryan Mackenzie — he triumphed in unseating the three-term incumbent — won by more than 12,000 votes.
"It's Christmas in November!" said an ecstatic Glenn Geissinger, chair of the Northampton County Republican Committee.
Republican momentum
Geissinger attributed his party's strong showing to a number of small factors adding up.
Republicans made significant efforts to improve voter participation in mail-in ballots. While both parties saw mail-in ballot requests drop off compared to 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic kept people home, the Democrats lost significantly more voters than their Republican counterparts.
Voter enthusiasm, he said, was also on their side; the eagerness to lift Trump to the White House was on par with 2016, when Trump last carried the county, Geissinger said.
He said on Election Night he sat in the county courthouse reading the raw numbers from individual voting machines as they trickled in. The returns he saw from machines in the county's suburbs like Forks Township convinced him he was in for a good night hours before races were called.
"He's going to win by at least 2,500 votes in Northampton [County]," he recalled thinking. "And I knew if he could win with those margins, he would carry everyone else down ballot across the finish line."
In contrast, Harris failed to match Joe Biden's 2020 results in most of the county. The unofficial results show she didn't make gains in any of the municipalities Biden carried in 2020. While she managed to outdo Biden by a few dozen votes in places like Lower Nazareth Township and North Catasauqua, none made up for the flagging support she found in Bethlehem (where she earned 1,058 fewer votes) or Bethlehem Township (where she received 309 fewer votes).
Democrats: 'We were the underdogs'
Matt Munsey, chair of the Northampton County Democratic Committee, was philosophical about the loss. He was uninterested in dabbling in hypotheticals such as how things could have turned out if Biden announced last year he wouldn't seek re-election instead of dropping out in late July.
"We were working to catch up. There were a lot of polls that showed that. We didn't quite reach that point."Matt Munsey, chair of the Northampton County Democratic Committee
The Harris campaign, he said, also had a better ground game. He saw almost no presence from Northampton County Republicans, who appeared to focus more on social media and online outreach rather than traditional door knocking.
And he was confident that the final tally would tighten things up for Democrats as provisional ballots and cured mail-in ballots are counted. It just won't be enough to close the gap, he said.
"We were the underdogs. We came in the race kind of from behind. We were working to catch up. There were a lot of polls that showed that. We didn't quite reach that point," Munsey said.
Cyclical nature
Borick, the Muhlenberg College professor, said some of the biggest issues weighing on voters were the economy, border security and anti-transgender rhetoric. Biden had connections to all three, and Harris couldn't dissociate herself from them as his vice president, he said.
He was unsure what more Harris could have done. She had just 107 days to wage her campaign, leaving little time to separate herself from Biden's shadow, if that was even possible, he said.
History wasn't on her side, either; the party out of power — in this case, the Republicans — does better when the incumbent president isn't on the ballot.
"Never underestimate the power of cycles. They dictate our weather. They dictate our economy. And they dictate our politics," Borick said.
