A purple county in the middle of a swing state may be a dream for presidential candidates, but the reality of being a campaign’s most desired item — a possibly undecided voter! — is a nightmare for the residents of Bucks County, Pennsylvania.
Voters here are hammered by political ads from all sides, and many are happy it will finally come to an end on Tuesday.
“It’s been insane,” says Wendy Hanley, a 49-year-old resident of Bensalem, as she leaves a polling place at a high school in the town. “That’s all we get in the mail. Phone calls, texts, TV.”
“People are coming to our door constantly,” she adds.
A passerby, who also just cast their vote, overhears the conversation and agrees: “They gotta stop all that sh**!” he shouts.
The road to the White House runs through counties like Bucks, which often flip between candidates and are used as signposts to determine who could win the race.
As The Independent drove into Bensalem, a township of some 63,000 people just 20 miles outside of Philadelphia, digital billboards were showing ads for Kamala Harris followed seconds later by ads for Donald Trump.
Doormats were filled with paper flyers and residents’ phones are regularly sent text messages from both campaigns. Even the lawn signs appeared to be split down the middle.
The town, which is more than 60 per cent white, sits not far from the Delaware River that divides Pennsylvania and New Jersey. The streets are lined with colonial-style homes, many of which are still decked out with Halloween decorations.
Pennsylvania is the biggest electoral vote state among the seven swing states, with campaigns vying for 19 electoral votes. A victory there means a candidate would only need to win over two other swing states to secure the 270 electoral votes to win the whole election.
An estimated $1.2bn has been spent on ads in Pennsylvania, according to ad-tracking firm AdImpact — the first time in US history that a single state has seen more than $1bn in ads.
“You watch a TV commercial and its for one candidate, and then the next commercial is about the same candidate but against them. Back to back,” Andrea Erickson, a 45-year-old nurse who moved to Bensalem from Philadelphia some years ago, tells The Independent after she casts her vote.
What makes Bucks County so valuable is the make-up of the voting pool. Party registration is almost evenly split between Republicans and Democrats, and non-college educated white voters (the largest voting bloc in the country) make up about half of the electorate.
Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro described Bucks County as “the swingiest of all swing counties in the swingiest of all swing states.”
Biden won here by four points in 2020 — by just over 17,000 voters. If Harris is unable to meet that margin, it could be an early warning sign for her chances of winning the state — and therefore the presidency.
Living in a purple county can make conversations between neighbors difficult at election time, especially for a small business owner like Cory Derricks, who doesn’t want to turn away customers from her hair salon due to politics.
“It’s been hard trying to talk to people,” she says outside a Bensalem polling station. “I have to watch everything I say. I try to just listen.”
She can’t wait for election season to be over, and the spotlight to be off them.
“Today I didn’t even want to put the TV on because I’m just tired of listening to it,” she adds.
Gladys Ajiri, who headed to the polls with her husband, says everyone in her house has been bombarded with non-stop political advertising — including her daughter who is not old enough to vote.
“The other day she said to me: ‘Mom, these people are driving me crazy!’ That’s how I feel too,” she says.
“They hijack your phone. It’s not like they text once — I got a text from the same person 20 times since summer,” she says.
She also notes that the constant barrage wouldn’t change her mind anyway.
“It’s policies that matter,” she says. “Most of us already know who we’re going to vote for.”
Bucks County residents might be over it and their inboxes full, but they take their role as the decider of the nation’s fate very seriously.
“I just hope we made the right choice,” Hanley says with a nervous laugh.
