South Hills guy here. I see an astounding number of Trump yard signs around here. Especially considering that the unions have thugs out there gunning for them.
Relatively few Hillary signs. When you see one you can be sure the resident is a public school teacher or union hack public employee.
The true watershed moment was when Democrat voters turned their backs on Jack Wagner, and old-school machine union guy, and elected Artsy Bike Path Bill Peduto as Mayor. Enough of the little old Catholic ladies have died-off to the point that it’s almost safe to come out of the closet. Almost.
I’m in the South Hills also :-). Kind of close to the city, but hoping to move farther away in the very, very near term (I’ll be here for the POTUS election though).
I think Trump’s going to be better than most recent Rs in Allegheny County. He won’t win it outright, but he’ll have greater than typical R numbers. Overall, it means he’ll overperform in SW PA.
If he reaches out to the black community, as the GOPe has been neglecting to do for decades, he’ll do extremely well. While some areas are no better than Chicago (Homewood-Brushton, Duquesne, Rankin), there are a few areas that could become both safer and better with a swift kick in the economy’s ass (Hazelwood could be *really* nice).
The problem he is going to run into in the black community around here are the various radio personalities (some work for the local PBS station) that will work tirelessly to paint Trump as a klansman. Anyone that has listened to some AM talk radio here in Pittsburgh knows the exact breed of filth I am talking about (*cough* Chris Moore *cough* ... I once heard him laugh as one of his regular callers openly wished death on Bush 43 when he was President ... that same bitch works for PBS too ... her quip was “Please raise taxes” while laughing when Bush said he’d raise taxes over “his dead body” ... she repeated it a couple of times to make it clear what she was saying).
Allegheny County is where the Cesspool of Pittsburgh resides for those that aren’t familiar with this super-awesome (sarcasm) region :-).