I live here in Pennsyltucky and can kind of explain this.
Most people around here are culturally conservative. That’s for sure.
However, despite this the Democrat Party has a virtual death grip on electoral politics for a lot of deeply ingrained historical reasons.
The Democrat Party, for reasons that are at this point wholly irrational, is perceived as “Da Party of Da Workin’ Man!”. This is for reasons that go way back to the Homestead Strike of 1892, the Robber Baron era and radical labor activism that co-opted the Catholic Church in the 1930’s. Generation after generation of young children growing up in Pittsburgh have had their parents and grandparents come to their bedrooms each night and teach them the Our Father, Humpty Dumpty, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, and Da Democrats is for DA WORKIN’ MAN! It’s so deeply ingrained in people’s psyches at this point that they react like Pavlov-trained dogs without ever giving it any critical thought.
Thus you have stuff happening like little old Catholic ladies who attend daily Mass regularly pulling the lever for Democrats who have never met an abortion they wouldn’t vote for. Can anything break the spell? This article perhaps points to our first opening. There is a new generation of Democrat taking control of the local party that is mainly led by young Bill Peduto fans. These are largely Millenial techies who have moved here to take tech jobs and have brought their Boston and Seattle politics with them. This is starting to grate on the old-school labor Dems who, although much more closely aligned with Republicans on social issues, can’t suppress their gag reflex when it comes to voting for one.
We’re a long way off from the spell being broken I fear.
How about frakking? Its been really good business for Pennsylvania and has delivered a lot of solid paying blue collar jobs. You can’t be for the working man and at the same time want to put them out of work.