The GOP Needs to Get Serious About Urban Strategy if it Wants Dominance

You almost have to TRY to lose urban counties by 60 points. The GOP needs to pull out a chalkboard and apply basic math and trend analysis, and quit wasting money on polling.

I was in Dallas over the weekend for Rachel’s second annual State Freedom Caucus Summit. Compared to most banquet-themed events, this one was not only efficient and mostly enjoyable, but also relevant to the significant challenges faced in the legislative process by those still willing to do the thankless and honest work required to push major reforms at the state level. Some of these summits turn into endless death by PowerPoint marathons that are devoid of actionable tasks and instruction. That was not the case with this one. As an aside, I saw “border czar” Tom Homan speak on Friday night and think he is President Trump’s most important appointment. I had to restrain my excitement when he suggested deportation numbers in years two and three of the administration will make everyone’s jaws hit the floor.

Rachel led a discussion group on Saturday centered on purple state strategies with the Freedom Caucus representatives of our most important battleground state, Pennsylvania, which has more electoral votes than any other such state (19) and several important and decisive U.S. House races slated for 2026 in what promises to be a tight race given all the redistricting going on nationally. She asked me to attend this breakout session because of my insights on election strategy and specifically because I’ve studied Pennsylvania from the Delaware River all the way to its far western flank for the past five years. I know the Keystone State like the back of my hand.

Rep. Rachel Keshel on the job

The Pennsylvania delegation tossed a few ideas across the room, and eventually I made the point that getting the legislative action they need requires not only progress in legislative elections, but a reliable expectation of winning and holding the state’s top office – the governorship. Unfortunately, Josh Shapiro is about as much of a gubernatorial lock as you’ll find in a battleground state, but as I wrote last month with respect to Arizona’s plight, getting a strong Republican governor is essential for getting good bills signed and enacted into law. While Arizona has been the most reliable Republican presidential state since 1952, Pennsylvania has not. It is a working-class state beginning to change its stripes and for now, only for the right candidates. These changes first manifest at the presidential level, and if sustained, begin to produce fruit in statewide races. Ohio went to Trump by 8.1% in 2016 when it had only been known as a very tight state for many decades, and a key bellwether dating back to 1896. Now it elects statewide Republicans up and down the ticket, even if they aren’t of the working-class friendly variety.

What I had to say about securing Pennsylvania’s statewide elections, first for the Presidency and then manifesting down-ballot, struck a nerve with my new friends:

You guys need to convince the state GOP to invest tons of money in Philadelphia County.

Keep in mind, ladies and gentlemen, that Philadelphia County has voted like this since 2000 in presidential elections:

Trump’s losing effort in 2024 (-58.6%) was the best Republican presidential performance by percentage margin, excluding any distorted by an abnormally large third-party vote (1992), since Bush 41 lost it in 1988 by 34.2%. The shift since 2016 doesn’t look major, given that Trump is still below 20%, but in going up 4.62% in his own vote share and with Harris 3.73% below Clinton’s share (and -15,454 votes), the overall rightward shift equals 8.35%. Trump lost Philly County by 475,277 in 2016, but “only” 424,260 in 2020. This insignificant shift saved Trump 50,017 in losing margin in this county alone, in a ballot-stuffing shortened win of the Keystone State checking in at Trump +120,266.

People at “conservative” events look at me like I have a hole in my head when I talk about concepts like going after big blue cities. A fatal flaw of the modern Republican mind when it comes to strategy is the tendency to silo and self-isolate from large chunks of the population where voters live in droves. When the results trend steadily leftward, confirmation bias sets in, making it very easy to forget that in 1984, Ronald Reagan “only” lost Philadelphia County by 30.34%. Had Trump only lost Philly County by that margin, his losing raw vote margin would have been just -219,543 in 2024, giving him a win in Pennsylvania of more than five points even with the awful election laws and cheating with mail-in ballots going on throughout the state. As things stand today, a statewide Republican has to crush it in 62 counties to narrowly override five counties I refer to as the “Philly Five” – Philadelphia, Montgomery, Delaware, Chester, and Bucks. The last four are suburban collar counties of Philly County:

Before anyone tries to tell me getting Reagan-esque margins in urban areas is a pipe dream, have a look at what three cycles of Trump elections did to South Florida, specifically Miami-Dade County, which I correctly identified as a national bellwether signifying a pending GOP presidential win last fall:

A few observations on my part follow:

· Florida has much better election law on the books than does Pennsylvania

· Florida tightened mail-in balloting procedures, now requiring address verification and eliminating automatic mail-outs

· Miami-Dade has a large anti-communist electorate filled with Cubans and Venezuelans

Still, one can’t deny the progress, and despite the permanent fog of Philadelphia’s electioneering and Pennsylvania’s easy-to-cheat statewide elections, candidates still have to gain votes to effect such large shifts, like Miami-Dade going from Clinton +29.4% to Trump +10.4% eight years later. Trump added 270,591 votes to his own column between 2016 and 2024, and when combined with ensuing Democrat losses, swung the county more than 400,000 votes in total margin. That is how winning is done, and it was done with deliberate effort from the Republican Party to identify the enemy strong points and dent it.

Dent it.

We don’t have to win it. On a sweep to the opposite side, the left tackle doesn’t engage the defensive end until the whistle; instead, he chips him just to knock him off his base, then proceeds downfield to block a linebacker. Too many conservative minds that don’t want anything to do with icky, nasty, always blue Philly forget that they don’t need to win Philadelphia County (and they won’t), but if they were to swing 10 or 15 points of overall margin by doing modestly better, they’d never lose the state. Remember, Democrats control 12 states with just a single county in presidential elections, and only recently have Republicans put themselves in position to absorb Philadelphia, Detroit, and a few other notable metros with gains in rural or outlying areas.

For the following exercise, I’m going to examine Cook County, Illinois, King County, Washington, and the two Twin Cities counties of Hennepin and Ramsey.

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Cook County, Illinois

This is the home county of core Chicago and surrounding suburbs. Here is how it has voted in each of Trump’s three elections:

Trump, despite notable improvement in margin of defeat, still lost by 41.6%. I’m tempted to use Ronald Reagan’s 1984 losing margin (-2.6%) for this exercise, but it’s not realistic given the increase in white, suburban leftist viewpoints; Cook County’s electoral situation didn’t truly go downhill until 1992, one election after Bush 41 lost the county by 12.41% to Michael Dukakis in the last election Illinois produced Republican electoral votes.

Illinois’ 2024 margin was Harris +10.9% (+1,005,586). Here is how Illinois would have voted if Trump could have replicated Bush 41’s performance in Cook County alone, ignoring the suburban counties around it:

Harris +4.3% (+399,654)

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King County, Washington