As Harris Rejects Fracking Ban, Will Anyone Listen to What Pennsylvanians Want?

With the presidential election just two months away, all eyes are on Pennsylvania. Donald Trump and Kamala Harris’s campaigns have each spent more than $130 million to advertise in the swing state, hoping to win its coveted 19 electoral votes and clear a path to the Oval Office.

Since securing Pennsylvania is likely crucial for winning the overall election — Trump won the state in 2016 and lost in 2020, reflecting the national outcome — political operatives and reporters are once more descending on the region in an attempt to crack the code of what makes Pennsylvania voters tick.

This year, as in election seasons past, politicians and the media are continuing to spread the dubious idea that one issue in particular has outsized importance to Pennsylvania’s voters: hydraulic fracturing for oil and gas, also known as fracking. On September 4, at a Pennsylvania town hall moderated by Fox News host Sean Hannity, Trump emphasized his support for fracking, telling the audience that “there’s no chance” Harris would allow the controversial practice as president.

“If she won, you’re not going to have any fracking in Pennsylvania,” Trump said. “You can’t take the chance. You’ve got no choice. You’ve got to vote for me.”

In reality, Harris herself has emphasized that she is no foe to fracking, despite its well-documented harmful impact on human health, climate and the environment. While Harris had previously expressed support for a fracking ban during her 2019 presidential run, she has made it clear that this election she is reversing course. “What I have seen is that we can grow, and we can increase a clean energy economy without banning fracking,” Harris told CNN reporter Dana Bash during a sit-down interview in August.

Harris’s switch-up is largely considered part of her bid to win Pennsylvania, which is one of the country’s top producing states for fracked natural gas.

The media has gladly helped prop up Pennsylvania’s reputation as a fracking-loving state: During the 2020 election, for instance, the New York Times “traveled to Western Pennsylvania to see if electability is as simple as who supports fracking in Pennsylvania.” That piece cited the opinions of some Pennsylvania Democrats, including then-Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, who felt that “a pledge to ban all hydraulic fracturing, better known as fracking, could jeopardize any presidential candidate’s chances of winning this most critical of battleground states — and thus the presidency itself.” Recently, an August 30 article from NPR called support for fracking a “key issue” for voters in the swing state.

Except there’s one big catch: Poll results show that support for fracking is not the open-and-shut case that national media outlets make it out to be.

A 2020 CBS/YouGov survey found that a slight majority of Pennsylvanians actually oppose fracking, with 52 percent of voters opposed and 48 percent in favor. Another 2020 poll, this one by Franklin & Marshall College, reported that 48 percent of registered Pennsylvania voters supported a ban on fracking, while only 39 percent opposed such a ban. And in a 2021 poll by the Ohio River Valley Institute, a sustainability-focused think tank, less than a third of Pennsylvanians said they supported continued fracking in the state.

On September 5, The Philadelphia Inquirer published an op-ed succinctly titled: “Everything you know from TV about Pennsylvania and fracking is wrong.”

“Here’s the truth from someone who actually lives in Pennsylvania,” wrote columnist Will Bunch. “Most folks, especially in the areas like Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and their suburbs where many voters reside, don’t really talk about fracking — certainly not as much as the big issues like the economy or abortion rights.”

Sean O’Leary, a senior researcher for Ohio River Valley Institute, told Bunch that “he thinks a fair amount of the public support for fracking is reinforced by politicians — including Democrats like Gov. Josh Shapiro — constantly overstating the economic rewards.”

Indeed, fracking is a much smaller industry in Pennsylvania than one might gather from glancing at media headlines. In 2019, the natural gas industry employed fewer than 24,000 people — a small fraction of the state’s overall employed population and a number that has continued to decline each year. According to Food & Water Watch, natural gas employment numbers hit record lows in 2023, accounting for a measly 0.32 percent of the state’s jobs.

Meanwhile, some politicians in Pennsylvania have embraced an unapologetic anti-fracking stance — and still won their elections. Rep. Summer Lee, a member of the pack of progressives in Congress known as “the Squad” and one of fracking’s most vocal critics, swept the race against her pro-fracking opponent in 2020, receiving 75 percent of the vote. Lee’s winning streak continued this year, when she beat out moderate Bhavini Patel in the Democratic primary in April.

Popular support for fracking has declined in Pennsylvania as understanding of its adverse effects has grown. A review of more than 2,500 scientific, medical, government and media reports — many of which focused on Pennsylvania — found that fracking is linked to numerous health problems, including cancer, asthma and congenital anomalies. The evidence is staggering, but here are some particularly egregious examples: An August 2023 report by the University of Pittsburgh determined that children living within a mile of a natural gas fracking well were seven times more likely to contract lymphoma, a rare form of childhood cancer. Another study found that children within a mile of a fracking well were also more likely to develop juvenile leukemia.

In October 2023, Physicians for Social Responsibility published a report detailing how more than 5,000 fracking wells in Pennsylvania had been injected with 160 million pounds of undisclosed chemicals, potentially including the class of industrial “forever chemicals” known as PFAS. Exposure to PFAS has been linked to various cancers, decreased fertility, developmental impacts and immune suppression, among numerous other harms. Nearly one in five drinking water systems tested in Pennsylvania this year was found to have PFAS levels above Environmental Protection Agency standards.

But thanks to organizers on the ground, working for more than a decade to educate the public about fracking, Pennsylvanians are becoming increasingly aware of these harms. Since 2018, Food & Water Watch has worked to pass 35 municipal ordinances to protect western Pennsylvania residents from fracking. One particularly notable win came in July 2022, when the Allegheny County Council voted yes on a measure, backed by Food & Water Watch, to ban all fracking in county parks.

“When I was going door-to-door to talk to people about fracking, I found that educated people really were opposed to it,” Jonathan Reyes, an East Pittsburgh City Council member, told The American Prospect in 2020. “A lot of people were very receptive when I talked about the possibility of creating alternatives to fracking.”

And yet as we trudge toward election day, these alternatives are getting little air time. Instead, the media have seized on the narrative that Pennsylvanians love fracking and are seeking a presidential candidate who will back it wholeheartedly. But it is time to listen to what Pennsylvanians really want — and continue the crucial grassroots work that has already led public opinion on fracking to sour.