Donald Trump has lavished attention on the Philadelphia suburbs over the last two weeks, and for good reason: Perhaps more than in any other battleground state, Trump has struggled to unite Pennsylvania Republicans around his candidacy.

A new Muhlenberg College/Morning Call poll released Saturday suggested Trump's focus might be working: 85 percent of self-identified Republicans are backing the real estate mogul, compared to 71 percent just the week before.


The degree of GOP coalescence behind Trump’s campaign in Pennsylvania and every other battleground state is emerging as a key indicator of his campaign’s health, helping to explain the tightening in states like Ohio and Florida as well as the stubborn polling gap between the candidates in places like Virginia and Wisconsin.

In Pennsylvania, Trump’s struggles have largely been related to his failure to connect with Republicans in the suburban collar counties around Philadelphia. Though he has enormous support among blue-collar voters in Western Pennsylvania and has even made inroads with Democrats, he’s lagging among Republicans in populous southeastern Pennsylvania, home to many white, college-educated voters — especially women. Trump’s pace in most polls before this weekend was well behind Mitt Romney, who captured 93 percent of Pennsylvania Republicans, according to 2012 exit polls.

“It’s largely his inability thus far to capture the college-educated whites, particularly college-educated white women, and particularly in the Philadelphia suburbs,” longtime Pennsylvania Republican strategist Charlie Gerow said of Trump’s struggle to reunify Republicans. “He still has to make the sale to them.”

“Paradoxically, a lot of the Democrats in the west are much more conservative than the Republicans in the east,” said John Brabender, a longtime GOP strategist in Pennsylvania. “Trump, out east, doesn’t pass the cocktail party test. It’s not yet where there’s a comfort level to go to a party and say, ‘I’m going to vote for Trump.’”

It’s a similar story in Virginia, where a recent Quinnipiac poll found Trump with the support of only 78 percent of Republicans and Clinton backed by 90 percent of Democrats. While Trump has made inroads in Virginia over the last month, he has never led a poll in Virginia since the general election began. His inability to unite his party there — another state where populous, fast-growing suburbs are home to college-educated voters — helps explain why many Republicans think it’s unlikely Trump will carry the state.

“There are no signs of Trump anywhere in [Virginia’s 10th Congressional District],” said David Ramadan, a former GOP state lawmaker and activist, referring to a suburban Northern Virginia seat that includes several pivotal counties. Republicans there, he said, are likely to support down-ballot Republicans but may not pull the lever for Trump. “We are seeing a consistent response from people saying they will split the ticket.”

In Wisconsin, where Trump was beaten badly in the primary and where he has yet to lead a general election poll, a Marquette University poll released this week also shows the GOP nominee closing on Clinton, but capturing only 77 percent of GOP voters. By contrast, Clinton — who also lost the state in her primary — has the support of 83 percent of Democrats.

Strategists in these states point to a variety of factors hampering Trump’s ability to unite the party, including his criticisms of popular GOP figures and his departures from party orthodoxy. They also cite his bombast —from his vitriol directed at a Gold Star family and a disabled reporter to his derision of prisoners of war — that has turned off Republican suburban voters, who are typically supportive of “establishment” Republicans like Mitt Romney or John McCain. His sometimes-erratic temperament has given pause to these economic- and security-minded voters who are trying to picture Trump in the Oval Office.

“I’ve said to Mr. Trump — and I talk to him pretty often — jobs, security and Mrs. Clinton. Please, don’t talk about anything else,” said state GOP chairman Rob Gleason. “Many of the moderate Republicans — the more wealthy Republicans, upper middle class — they have not embraced the Trump candidacy. They didn’t like what he said early on.”

Gleason said Republican disunity has, in part, been fueled by local GOP leaders who get nervous when “a guy like Trump” is on the ballot. Factions develop that undermine party discipline — a particular problem, he said, in Montgomery County, where Democrats have found success in local elections despite a huge Republican presence. He noted that local GOP lawmakers like Congressmen Charlie Dent and Patrick Meehan have withheld support from Trump.

In an interview, Dent made clear that he is not alone.

“The bottom line is, while Donald Trump is overperforming a bit in the ‘T’ [the shorthand for central Pennsylvania and the northern tier of counties] and parts of southwestern Pennsylvania, he’s seriously underperforming in the collar counties of Philadelphia, more than offsetting his overperformance in other areas of the state,” Dent said. “Particularly in the collar counties, those tend to be higher income, higher education areas, that’s where he seems to be struggling the most. That seems to be the reality of the situation.”

Trump’s fortunes are more promising in Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio and Florida, where he has led in some recent polls and where both he and Clinton are winning support from closer to 9 out of 10 self-identified members of their party, depending on the poll.

Ohio’s national GOP committeeman Jim Dicke said it’s partly the result of local Republican Party leaders vocally uniting behind Trump. Though Ohio Gov. John Kasich has been a high-profile holdout, he hasn’t actively thwarted Trump’s chances in the state, and most lower-level Republican operatives are falling in behind Trump’s bid.

“I think we’ve been really blessed with our state party leadership understanding that they’ve got a job to do regardless what their personal preferences were in the primary,” he said.

The difference between Pennsylvania and Ohio can also be explained, in part, by the difference in the number of voters with college degrees, a fault line for Trump support: 2012 exit polls showed that nearly half of Pennsylvania voters had college degrees, while only 40 percent of Ohio voters did.

There are signs that Trump is attempting to address some of his weaknesses with voters who should be within reach: His daughter-in-law, Lara, has been leading a women’s outreach effort in key swing states like Ohio, where she and women like Katrina Pierson, Trump’s spokeswoman, have been making the explicit case that he’s not a racist, in an effort to soothe suburban unease.

Still, his problem in uniting the party remains a work in progress in Pennsylvania, which with 20 electoral votes is central to Trump’s path to the White House.

“I think moderate Republicans are having a hard time with him,” said Alan Novak, a former chair of the Republican Party of Pennsylvania.

Trump’s campaign seems to understand that. He has visited Delaware County — the least affluent of the four Philadelphia collar counties — twice in the last two weeks to make overtures to skeptical suburban voters, including by unveiling a child care plan aimed at galvanizing women.

“I don’t think it’s accidental he [will have] been to Delaware County twice,” said Novak, who contends Trump could benefit from the county’s robust Republican infrastructure, as well as a heavy unionized population that hasn’t been entirely hostile to Trump.

But Gleason said the beginnings of Trump’s GOP resurgence are evident. The first sign? “We had 11,000 requests for tickets in six hours” to Trump’s Delaware County event last week. He added that the volatile security situation — marked by bombings in New Jersey and New York last week — are giving some security-minded suburban Republicans reasons to rethink Trump.

“Last weekend, the bomb blast was in Seaside Heights [New Jersey]. A lot of rich suburban people [from Pennsylvania] own homes right there,” Gleason said. “The decision that they have to make is do I want Mrs. Clinton’s mealy-mouthed response to that or do I want Donald Trump’s hard-ass response?”

Gleason said he intends to laser-focus on southeast Pennsylvania over the next six weeks and perhaps peel back some Republicans who have flirted with Gary Johnson’s libertarian candidacy. The Trump’s campaign solution will include dispatching his family members, like his daughter Ivanka — who’s proven to be among Trump’s best ambassadors to young, suburban voters – into those crucial counties to try and shore up support.

“He’s in the beginning now of a really hard push in the Philadelphia suburbs,” he continued. “They’re coming home. They are coming home.”