Rural PA is way more right wing than rural New England, or even Upstate NY. However, it's not appreciably different in terms of politics from rural Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, etc.
Basically there's a general rule throughout the Notheast/Midwest that as you move south rural areas steadily get more conservative. This is even true within Pennsylvania. Ignoring 2016 - where there was a huge collapse in Democratic support throughout the rural far north, you even see a big difference within PA. Somewhere like Bradford county in rural NEPA, around 6 out of 10 people were Republican, but then if you look at Fulton by the border of Maryland, 8 out of 10 people voted GOP.
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Originally Posted by pj3000
Interstate 80 is as good of a dividing line as any... north of it is "Yankee" and south of it is "midlands". The nothern tier of PA is Yankee and much more like the southern tier of NY. Norhtwestern PA and Northeastern PA cities like Erie and Scranton/Wilkes-Barre are much more like places in New York state than they are like what is largely considered traditional "Pennsylvanian".
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The Wyoming Valley was originally settled by people from Connecticut, and I believe Erie was mostly settled by Yankees as well. You can hear this in the accents, and you can see this in the housing styles. Very little in the way of high-quality urban fabric in Erie or Scranton. Instead of attached brick rowhouses, you have (even in 19th century neighborhoods) mostly detached wood-frame houses set pretty far back from the sidewalk.
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Originally Posted by dc_denizen
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Carlisle is my favorite of the bunch. It has benefited from being the county seat of Cumberland, along with having a small private college (Dickinson) located right in downtown. There's actually a small historically black neighborhood just to the northwest of downtown, though it's really only a couple of blocks.
In general I think the fact that the industrial revolution largely passed over South-Central PA is why so many of the small cities and boroughs are well-preserved. Essentially there wasn't a tremendous demand for land area within the urban core to be given over to giant mills and warehouses, which meant you kept having residential neighborhoods abutting directly against the downtown area.