Early election returns in Pa. show Donald Trump’s support in rural and Rust Belt areas has grown since 2020

Former President Donald Trump is exceeding his 2020 vote shares in rural and Rust Belt areas across Pennsylvania.

Trump has improved on his 2020 vote share in 35 of 36 counties with 95% or more of the vote counted as of 11 p.m. (Pennsylvania's other 31 counties had far fewer results tabulated.)

In all but one of those counties (Cumberland), Donald Trump has a higher share of the vote than he did four years ago. He also already has a slightly higher number of total votes — about 18,000 more than he did in 2020 with more votes still to be counted.

Vote counting has been slower in Philadelphia and its suburban counties, which are key to Harris' strategy for Pennsylvania. Only 68% of the vote has been counted in Philadelphia. In the suburbs, 52% has been counted in Bucks County, 48% in Chester County, 68% in Delaware County, and 59% in Montgomery County.

No winner has been called in the state and many of the blue counties Democrats rely on to make up for expected losses elsewhere still had thousands of ballots left to count.

But the improvement for Trump indicates he's managed to expand his base in the parts of the state he focused on the most.

Over the last year, Trump has made 31 visits to Pennsylvania and only seven of those visits were to Philadelphia and its suburbs. Two were to Allegheny. The other 22 spanned the state, most of them large rallies where he aimed to bolster a base that he managed to grow from 2016.

Most of Trump's gains appear to be in red counties with smaller populations but if his improvements carry across the state, they could add up.

One region that stands out is Northeastern Pennsylvania. In Lackawanna, home to President Joe Biden's native Scranton, where Trump has done better than Biden did there in 2020. Trump already had more votes in Lackawanna than he got there in 2020 with votes still to be counted. Democrats appeared to lose voters in Lackawanna.

And in Luzerne County, with 95% of the expected vote counted, Trump has 60.4% of the vote, compared with his final share of 56.7% in 2020. His tally of 87,512 votes, with more votes still to be counted, represents about 600 more votes than his final 2020 total.

The 61 counties outside of Philadelphia, its suburbs, and Allegheny have long been the main vote draws for Republicans in the state but Trump has supercharged the margins there.

The 2012 Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, received a comfortable 396,000-vote margin in those counties. Trump more than doubled that margin, raking in 816,000 votes in 2016, and becoming the first Republican to capture Pennsylvania since 1988.

He managed to extend that margin by another 14,000 votes in 2020. Any path for Trump in Pennsylvania had to involve him posting big numbers in rural areas again. And as of 11 p.m. on Election Day, he was on that path.