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HARRISBURG — The 2024 presidential election is over. And after months at the center of the political universe, the country now knows how Pennsylvania voters feel politically: Most picked Donald Trump.
Trump beat Kamala Harris in the commonwealth by a little less than two percentage points. It was a decisive victory he repeated in all key swing states.
So what made voters choose him?
Ahead of the election, Spotlight PA spoke to 10 Pennsylvania voters who were struggling, in one way or another, to choose a candidate. We followed up with four undecided voters to learn who they chose, why, and how they’re feeling now.
Nicole Banta, Chester County
When Nicole Banta first spoke to Spotlight PA, she was torn between Trump and Harris and had decided to pray on the decision.
She thought both had drawbacks: Trump seemed too stuck on various personal grievances, and Harris hadn’t impressed her as vice president.
Banta made up her mind the day before the election. The next day, the 40-year-old mom and registered Republican voted in line with her party and supported Trump.
One of the deciding factors, she said, was that she started paying more attention to the vice presidential candidates.
“I kind of like J.D. Vance,” she said. “His whole history, the Hillbilly Elegy thing. … I was just thinking about the future and … who I favored more in that regard.”
She also cited other reasons, such as not loving the way Harris campaigned.
“All the way up until Election Day, I was watching each candidate, and I thought Harris spent a massive amount of money on celebrities,” she said. “I think that spoke to her state of mind, as far as being out of touch with everyday Americans.”
Banta is happy with her decision. She also said she’s pleased this election seemed much more peaceful than 2020.
Trump’s unfounded claims of widespread fraud, for instance, died out quickly when it became clear he would win.
“I feel at peace about it,” she said. ‘I mean, we don’t have crazy riots or anything going on. That gives me some peace and hope. Hopefully we can unite on some level.”
Ilya Pribyshchuk, Erie County
Ilya Pribyshchuk was undecided in the final weeks of the election, but said he made up his mind to vote for Trump based on two interviews — one that Harris sat for, and one that she didn’t.
Pribyshchuk, a 42-year-old construction manager from Erie, said he didn’t like Harris’ comment on The View that she couldn’t think of anything she’d do differently from President Joe Biden in the past four years.
As a manager, Pribyshchuk said, he knows people will make mistakes. Instead he values “the ability to admit your mistakes and correct them.”
In that light, Harris’ comment felt out of touch with so many people struggling with inflation, he said.
“I don’t expect Donald Trump, Joe Biden, or anybody else to be perfect. They’re not Jesus,” Pribyshchuk said, “but I do expect them to be real.”
Pribyshchuk was also bothered by Harris deciding not to sit down with podcaster Joe Rogan. Although he is not a regular Rogan listener, Pribyshchuk appreciated that Trump was willing to sit for three hours and chat with the host in an unscripted conversation. Harris’ refusal to do the same made him doubt her ability to handle the job.
“My client is constantly interviewing me, and I’m not running away from that,” Pribyshchuk said. “I’m constantly interviewing my new employees. And if a new employee is not willing to sit down and have a half an hour conversation with me … I’m not willing to hire.”
Moving forward, Pribyshchuk, an independent, said he hopes Democrats take a lesson from the loss and are ready to compete in the 2026 midterm election, because he likes balance within the government. “Both, when they have full control, they go nuts,” he said.
He still votes for some Democrats — including his local state Rep. Ryan Bizzarro — and likes some of their policies.
Democrats are more willing to help the poor, he said, and he likes parts of their immigration platform. Pribyshchuk emigrated to the United States through a program for Soviet refugees created by Democrats in Congress. But he also hopes that Democrats move right on some issues, like keeping “school for education, not indoctrination.”
As for Trump and Congress, he has a simple message: If you want to tackle a problem like immigration, do it.
“He’s gonna have full, full power,” Pribyshchuk said, referring to Republicans holding the presidency and both the U.S. House and Senate. “No excuses in 2026.”
Muhammad Qureshi, Philadelphia County
In the days before the election, Muhammad Qureshi, a registered Republican, wasn’t truly undecided. He had intended to vote for Trump but changed his mind late in the game when he heard the Republican’s rhetoric on the war in Gaza and thought the former president sounded racist.
He voted for Harris, and also chose mostly Democrats downballot. But though his favored candidate didn’t win, he told Spotlight PA he’s not despairing.
One must, Qureshi said, “stay optimistic that something better is going to come.”
“We don’t have another option here,” he added.
A nurse who immigrated to the U.S. from Pakistan, Qureshi said he hopes Trump will address rising costs in higher education and health care. He also wants his neighborhood to become safer, inflation to slow, and the Trump administration to bring about tax relief for ordinary people.
He would feel more optimistic if Harris had been elected, he said, in part because the vice president would have represented a new generation of leadership. He also thinks she would have been more beholden to her constituents, as she would have been eligible to run for a second term, unlike Trump who is term-limited (though he has hinted at attempting to use a loophole to run again).
Qureshi says that while he hasn’t heard anything too concerning from Trump since the election, he worries about the criminal conviction that Trump faces.
“I hope it won’t destroy our judicial system,” Qureshi said. “As a president, if he is sentenced, that would be a huge problem.”
His main concern is whether Trump focuses on “his personal agenda” as opposed to improving the quality of living for everyday people.
Qureshi noted that Trump’s “favor” for leaders with authoritarian records, such as Russian President Vladimir Putin and Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orbán, was also concerning to him.
“I hope that somebody advises him that this is the time that he pays more attention to issues inside of this country,” Qureshi said.
Selami Veseli, Lehigh County
When he spoke to Spotlight PA two weeks before the election, Selami Veseli, an independent, was leaning toward voting for Trump, but said he could change his mind if the former president made a “blunder.”
Ultimately, Veseli voted for Trump, but he didn’t expect the Republican to win so decisively.
Veseli, who immigrated from Albania in the late 1990s, believes Democrats lost the election because of their muddled platform, which he thinks centered on a “cancel-culture, woke agenda,” instead of focusing on more substantive issues.
He believes voters were turned off by attempts to build a coalition with Republicans like former Vice President Dick Cheney.
“That was funny,” Veserli said of the move. ”That was desperation.”
Veseli thinks of himself as further right than Trump ideologically, saying he supports the president-elect’s appointment of a “border czar,” but said he is more concerned with fundamental rights like voting and free speech.
He believes that those basic freedoms are threatened by establishment politicians who make policies and deals “behind the scenes” without public scrutiny.
To that end, Veseli supports Trump’s stated desire to use the Department of Justice to prosecute his political enemies, who Trump has called “the enemy from within.”
“I absolutely want him to do that,” Veseli said. “He’s not going to do himself any favors but some people need to get out of there.”
He believes that by getting rid of establishment politicians, Trump could create room for new political leadership in both parties. Veseli hopes that leads to more ideology-based debates rather than what he sees as backroom deals.
Veseli cautioned that he wouldn’t support Trump failing to uphold due process. He doesn’t want the president-elect to try to stymie or undermine work similar to that done by the U.S. House’s select committee to investigate the Jan 6th insurrection.
“You have American support, use it wisely. You have two years to do [what] needs to be done,” Veseli said, referring to Republicans holding both the U.S. House and Senate through at least 2026.
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