August 2026
Morning Scrapple Results — July 2026
Our monthly snapshot of political opinion from the nation’s most important battleground state.
Welcome to the July edition of PennLive/Bravo Group’s Morning Scrapple, our snapshot of political opinion from the nation’s most important battleground state.
You know the drill by now: bars, percentages, crosstabs. For our more quant-minded readers, head over to our interactive dashboard where you’ll find all the usual monthly tracking, like the latest from our gubernatorial race:
But this month we’re adding a new item to the menu.
July is our qualitative wave, which means instead of handing Pennsylvanians a list of questions and asking them to pick, we handed them a blank box and asked them to talk.
And 630 registered voters in PA took us up on our offer.
To find out how we can help you with your next research project, email us at morningscrapple@thebravogroup.com
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The question: How can state government make a meaningful impact on your life?
More than half of Pennsylvanians, 55%, answered with something you could put on a receipt. Taxes, prices, wages, rent, groceries, a fixed income that isn’t stretching.
But watch what happens when you split it by party.
Republicans said taxes – 34% of them, against 22% of Democrats. Democrats said prices (20% vs. 12%) and healthcare (14% vs. 5%)
Same kitchen table. Same anxiety. Completely different vocabulary. If you’re a campaign, a coalition or anyone trying to write one message for the whole Commonwealth, that gap is your entire problem in one chart.
The generational split is even wider. Among voters 65 and older, 38% mentioned taxes, which is the highest of any group we looked at, and they were remarkably specific about which ones:
“Don’t charge seniors property taxes after 65.”
“Stop property tax on seniors — being on fixed income, we are going broke.”
“Remove taxes on homeowners, especially seniors. They cannot afford their own homes that they worked all their lives to pay for.”
And then there’s the group that answered a question about what government could do by telling us it can’t.
“Too late for that. Cannot make any impact to me.”
“Stay out of my life and my wallet.”
“They can’t — we the people have to.”
The question: What’s the one issue candidates for governor need to talk about more?
Affordability and the economy, 40% of the conversation. Nothing else is within 30 points.
But here’s the wrinkle we didn’t expect. Tax relief was the No. 1 thing people wanted from government (27%) and only the No. 3 thing they wanted candidates to discuss (12%).
Read that how you like, but our read is simple: Voters want tax relief delivered.
The question: What’s one thing about living in Pennsylvania that people outside the state don’t understand?
We expected a consensus. We got three completely different states (thanks, Carville).
26% described a place that’s expensive, badly run or stuck in the past.
“Why we are taxed to death and you have to pay to drive through the state!”
“How high our taxes are. How bad our roads are. How great the people are.”
“We are like literally 20 years behind everyone else.”
17% described an underrated gem and got specific about it:
“That we have the best snack foods in the world. You cannot buy decent pretzels outside of Pennsylvania.”
“We came up with Whoopie pies, not Maine.”
“Pennsylvanians are ‘good neighbors,’ willing to help others in need.”
“Good question. State flower is an orange cone.”
And 16% said the real misunderstanding is that Pennsylvania is one place at all.
“It’s two blue dots with red in the middle.”
“It’s really three states within one border.”
“We are Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, State College and Alabama in the middle.”
“Philadelphia is not the yardstick by which our whole state should be measured.”
“We’re the Northernmost Southern state.”
Here’s the part that stopped us: the “it’s expensive and broken” group and the “it’s an underrated gem” group barely overlap. Five respondents out of 630 landed in both. These aren’t Pennsylvanians with mixed feelings about home. These are two groups describing two different places, and both of them live here.
Oh, and they contradicted each other outright, about 3-to-1 toward expensive:
“Why we are taxed to death …”
“How affordable it is to live here.”
And now, the Pennsylvania economy as an animal
We showed everyone a lineup of animals and asked which one best represents the state’s economy. Then we asked them why.
The winner, by a mile: the tortoise, at 19%. One in five Pennsylvanians looked at this state’s economy and saw a tortoise.
Of the whole sample, 20% used words like slow, stuck, stagnant or sluggish in their explanation. Our favorite:
“Fairly steady, but not going to win many races.”
But before anyone writes the obituary, tortoise-pickers were actually less likely than the average Pennsylvanian to say the state is on the wrong track (34% vs. 40% according to our interactive dashboard). For a good chunk of them, slow wasn’t the complaint. Slow was the compliment.
“Slowly moving in the right direction.”
“Slow and steady.”
Second and third place tell a different story. Snake came in at 12%, and hardly anyone who picked it was talking about economics. They were talking about the people running things.
“Sneaky politicians.”
Donkey, also 12%, was mostly about being stubborn and stuck in one place. (And no, before you ask, donkey-pickers were not disproportionately Democrats. We checked.)
We survey all Pennsylvania-registered voters through digital advertising, randomized text-message outreach, and email recontact with prior opt-in survey participants. This multichannel recruitment ensures a refreshed and representative respondent pool.
This survey of 630 likely Pennsylvania voters was conducted from July 17-24, 2026. Results were weighted by age, gender and political party to reflect Pennsylvania’s electorate, yielding a 95% credibility interval of ±4.4 percentage points. You can read more about our methodology here.
If you have a question, suggestion, or would like to learn more about our research offering, please feel free to email us at morningscrapple@thebravogroup.com
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