The Key to Victory
Donald Trump won Pennsylvania by 0.7 points in 2016, a shocking blow to the Democratic party as he was the first Republican to win Pennsylvania since 1988. In 2020, we knew that Pennsylvania would be a critical state for Swing Blue Alliance (formerly Swing Left Greater Boston) to focus its efforts, and with such a close election in 2016, we knew we were in striking distance of its 20 Electoral College points. Our efforts in Pennsylvania helped build the momentum Joe Biden needed to win by focusing on bringing out our base, especially across Philadelphia and its suburbs.
Thousands of Swing Blue Alliance (SBA) volunteers devoted more than 13,000 hours of their time to support the state — including more than 300,000 phone calls, texts, letters, and postcards. Together, we helped Joe Biden flip the state blue, a decisive victory that gave him the Electoral College votes he needed to tip the election and propel him to victory.
Vote by Mail in Pennsylvania
We knew that vote by mail would be essential in Pennsylvania from the start, so we started early, helping to get out the vote months before the election, and give the Democrats a wide margin ahead of Election Day. Those early efforts proved to be critical as Donald Trump held a strong margin before all the mail-in votes were counted in Democratic strongholds. But as the media predicted, it was only a red mirage. When all the votes were counted, we held the state by a 0.7 margin — this time in the Democrat’s favor.
Nearly 1M absentee votes were cast for Joe Biden in the election, representing about 30% of the President-Elect’s total vote count for the state. While SBA cannot say how much of this total it represented, we know that our volunteer’s efforts helped sway the election in the Democratic Party’s favor.
Volunteer Activities in Pennsylvania
SBA volunteers participated in more than 530 events, which covered more than 6,000 volunteer shifts. Thousands of volunteers wrote more than 210,000 letters and postcards to support the Democratic Party and conducted more than 100,000 phone calls to Pennsylvania voters.
Thank you to the whole team!
When we started out at the beginning of this election, we didn’t know where our efforts would be most important. We engaged teams across each of the super states because we knew that any or all of them could mean a success or failure in the election.
In total, thousands of volunteers with Swing Blue Alliance supported the election in Pennsylvania, and their time and efforts couldn’t have been more critical to Joe Biden’s election win. The time they spent in Pennsylvania — writing hundreds of thousands of letters and making hundreds of thousands of calls — helped Joe Biden become the President-Elect.
Volunteers for the state represented more than 6,000 people. 91 event hosts helped to coordinate and guide all of our volunteers to support the election and drive us to success.
A big THANK YOU to the whole Pennsylvania team for their outstanding effort. Without their time, energy, and enthusiasm, we might not have won the election. Congratulations! It was their effort that helped to bring Joe Biden’s win to his home state.