US election: Latinos hold the key to swinging Pennsylvania

After Taylor Swift endorsed Kamala Harris for president in early September 2024, posting a message to her 284 million fans on Instagram, some Democratic strategists suggested that an endorsement from Puerto Rican recording artist Bad Bunny could do more to sway the election – particularly in the key swing state of Pennsylvania, which is home to about 300,000 eligible Puerto Rican voters.

But when many Americans think of Pennsylvania’s deindustrialized eastern counties – including presidential bellwethers such as Northampton – they may think more of Billy Joel’s “Allentown” than Bad Bunny’s “Una Velita,” a song about the aftermath of Hurricane Maria.

As a professor of history and director of Latina/o Studies at Penn State, I think that both entertainers – the legendary singer-songwriter and the Grammy-winning titan of reggaeton and trap – can help explain the political terrain in the Keystone State, which is widely viewed as the battleground that will determine the next president.

‘Closing all the factories down’

In 1982, when Billy Joel recorded his somber song about workers left behind because “they’re closing all the factories down,” he was mainly describing the situation in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, 6 miles from Allentown.

Beginning in the late 1970s, the massive Bethlehem Steel Corp. began to lay off tens of thousands of workers. But Joel found that not much rhymed with “Bethlehem,” so he used the neighboring city instead.

By the 1970s, Pennsylvania’s smaller industrial cities such as Bethlehem, Hazleton, York, Reading and Lancaster were losing population and vitality, and in many cases had been declining for decades.

And for many Americans, especially those outside Pennsylvania, the image of these cities hasn’t