How Coal Country Went Conservative: An electoral analysis of the Wyoming Valley

The Wyoming Valley is made up of Lackawanna, Luzerne, and Wyoming Counties, though the physical valley is ironically only located in Lackawanna and Luzerne. Though it's a rather small region of around 500,000 people, its political importance is quite outsized relative to its size. Firstly, the Wyoming Valley is in Pennsylvania, which is quite frankly the most important state out of the fifty in our union–Pennsylvania has been the tipping point state (the state that mathematically decided the winner) in the past three Presidential elections (2016, 2020, and 2024). Still, that is a fact shared by the other approximately 12.5 million Pennsylvanians who don’t live in the region so what makes the Wyoming Valley especially politically important? Well secondly, the majority of the district is also located in Pennsylvania’s 8th Congressional District which is one of the most competitive house seats in the nation (flipping Republican by 1.62% in 2024, being the 9th closest House race out of 435).