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Trump broadens reach and 'sets up huge' for race

Donald Trump's mastery of Pennsylvania in the Republican primary Tuesday was so total, so complete, so broad, and so deep that it is hard to overstate.

Donald Trump's mastery of Pennsylvania in the Republican primary Tuesday was so total, so complete, so broad, and so deep that it is hard to overstate.

He got 57 percent of the vote, and carried every county in the state - including Chester, Delaware, Montgomery and Bucks, the kind of suburban places that have spurned him in other states.

Trump dominated the education and income scales like a master pianist. He won every demographic category in the exit poll of Pennsylvania GOP voters: men, women, the very conservative, the moderate, born-again evangelical Christians, young, old.

He even beat John Kasich by double digits in the town where Kasich grew up - McKees Rocks.

Trump did lose to the Ohio governor among the 33 percent of voters who told pollsters that experience in government was a more important quality in a president than being "outside the establishment."

Guess who won the latter category.

About 50 percent of the state's 3.1 million registered Republicans cast ballots in the closed primary, said pollster G. Terry Madonna - who noted it was probably the largest GOP primary turnout here since the 1980 battle between Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

"There's no doubt that Trump broadened his appeal," said Madonna, a professor at Franklin and Marshall College. "The question is, can he broaden it enough to woo independents and Democrats in the fall?"

He broadened it Tuesday to the college-educated crowd. While Trump's core support has been concentrated among lower-income workers without college degrees, he won the votes of 48 percent of Pennsylvania Republicans with bachelor's degrees, several points above his usual performance, exit polls showed. He also carried a solid majority, 53 percent, of voters with income between $100,000 and $200,000.

Trump also romped to victory in Delaware, Maryland, Connecticut and Rhode Island - all states that in elections past have been a veritable vale of Republican centrism.

Despite the landslides, though, there were some worrisome signs for him and his party buried in the numbers.

Nearly 25 percent of Republicans voting in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Connecticut said they would not vote for Trump in November. Exit polls were conducted in those three states for a consortium of the Associated Press and the major TV networks.

As Trump rolled to a victory margin of 35 percentage points in Pennsylvania, about four in 10 of the state's GOP voters pronounced themselves either "scared" or "concerned" at the idea of Trump as president. A solid majority said the grueling Republican campaign has done more to divide the party than to unify it.

By contrast, 69 percent of Pennsylvania Democrats said the prolonged battle between former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders has energized their party. Only 15 percent of Democrats voting in the state's primary said they would not cast a ballot for Clinton in the fall if she wins the nomination.

Democratic turnout, though, was around 40 percent of the party's 4.1 million Democrats, Madonna said, compared with the GOP's 50 percent. That fits the pattern: In Republican nominating contests throughout the country, turnout generally has exceeded Democrats' participation rates. GOP analysts say that is an indication that their voting base is more energized, a good sign for the fall.

"To paraphrase Spinal Tap, the Trump crowds 'Go to 11,' " said David Urban, a Washington lobbyist and longtime Pennsylvania Republican strategist who joined the Trump campaign as an adviser in the state this month.

"It's a movement, a wave," Urban said. "Mr. Trump's showing sets up huge for the fall here. I don't know if he will win, but he sure is going to contest Pennsylvania."

The wave was not uniform. Trump, for instance, carried Chester County with 46 percent of the vote - while he got 77 percent in Luzerne County in northeastern Pennsylvania, a region that he captured with the help of two regional members of Congress, Republicans Tom Marino and Lou Barletta.

Democratic analysts say that few opponents could motivate the party's voter base in the fall more than Trump, with his history of misogynistic and anti-immigrant positions.

But David Axelrod, chief strategist for President Obama's 2008 campaign, said on a recent edition of his podcast that Trump could be tougher than some expect, given his appeal to working-class voters worried about their economic prospects - the kind of people political scientists once labeled Reagan Democrats.

The mogul "can make incursions in places you don't expect," Axelrod said.

Both parties' front-runners are burdened with poor approval ratings. An average of 55.6 percent of U.S. voters disapprove of Clinton, according to the Huffington Post's aggregation of polls. Trump is viewed unfavorably by 63.6 percent.

And it's been a year to make pundits and pollsters hedge all bets.

"We have to be a little cautious - we don't know enough yet about where we'll be in the fall," Madonna said. "What else will happen in the most improbable campaign in modern history?"

tfitzgerald@phillynews.com

215-854-2718

@tomfitzgerald

www.inquirer.com/bigtent