Protecting and creating new jobs were among the most pressing issues for voters lining up to cast their ballots Tuesday in Erie, a competitive blue-collar Pennsylvania county with a formidable reputation for picking US election winners.
Mason Ken Thompson, 66, voted at Edison Elementary School in Erie, the main city in the Pennsylvania county of the same name whose 270,000 people — voting in a tightly-contested swing state — will have an outsized role in whether Kamala Harris or Donald Trump wins the White House.
“Manufacturing jobs have gone away from Erie. It’s a big problem, and Trump hasn’t helped that situation at all,” said Thompson, who wore a camouflage baseball cap adorned with the US flag.
“I believe that Kamala is going to help the young people with housing,” he added as a DJ played a roster of all-American hits while voters streamed into the school-turned-polling station.
Nearby, the Country Fair gas station handed free donuts to voters.
Erie is one of a handful of counties to have boomeranged between Democrat and Republican, voting for former president Barack Obama twice, then narrowly for Trump, before scraping out a Democratic win for President Joe Biden in 2020.