Beaver County's role in presidential race attracts attention

Beaver County’s role in the presidential election and the political transformation of the former Democratic stronghold are explored in a WPXI Now streaming special featuring Tribune-Review senior news editor Tom Fontaine.

WPXI-TV investigative reporter Aaron Martin hosted the special, which also featured NBC News reporter Dasha Burns.

“It’s hard to imagine an area that has undergone within a period of 10 to 15 years such a thorough kind of political transformation as Beaver County,” Fontaine, a former political reporter who previously worked in Beaver County and still calls the area home, said in the special.

Fontaine said 17 of the area’s 18 county row officers and state senators and representatives were Democrats in 2004, the last time a Democratic presidential candidate carried Beaver County. Now, he said, 12 of the 18 elected officials are Republicans.

While the makeup of the elected officials has changed dramatically in recent years and GOP presidential candidates have carried the county in the past three presidential elections, Fontaine said Democrats still hold a registration advantage as about 47% of registered voters are Democrats, 40% are Republicans and 13% belong to another party or are not affiliated with any party.

Trump won Beaver County by about 19 percentage points in 2016. Before the past three presidential elections, just two Republicans had managed to carry Beaver County since 1932: Richard Nixon in 1972 and Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1956.

To watching the streaming special, go here.

Beaver County also will be featured prominently in the NBC Nightly News on Sunday night, with Kate Snow co-anchoring the broadcast from there.