The voters of Pennsylvania, a central battleground in the presidential election, absorbed the parties’ nominating conventions with varying degrees of attention. Amid the speeches and pageantry on television, interviews with voters found little immediate sign that two weeks of political messages had changed any minds.
In Hazleton, a blue-collar town of 25,000, contractor Bruce Kaczmarczyk said he had decided early to back GOP nominee Donald Trump—the first vote he would ever cast—and that he didn’t think Democrats could sway him. “I haven’t watched any of the Democratic convention this week. I watched every minute I could of the Republicans last week,” he said.
Mr. Kaczmarczyk, 58 years old, said he was angry that politicians have been giving money to “people who don’t deserve it’’ through government programs. “I registered to vote when Trump announced…If you get someone from outside the system, who doesn’t owe anybody anything, he can get in there and see where the money is going and he can fix it,’’ he said.
Interviews with other Pennsylvania voters during the course of last week found a similar effect: The conventions confirmed voters’ impulses rather than changing them.
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