HARRISBURG, Pa. — Republicans landed historic victories in Pennsylvania this week, winning the battleground state’s valuable presidential electoral votes, posting a two-seat gain in its U.S. House delegation and sweeping all four statewide offices on the ballot, including a U.S. Senate seat.

The strong performance means Donald Trump has won Pennsylvania in two out of three tries after Republicans had lost six consecutive presidential elections.

Something similar happened in the other “blue wall” states of Michigan and Wisconsin, Rust Belt states where Trump prevailed again after losing in 2020. Still, Democrats held on in key Senate races in Wisconsin and Michigan, if just barely, and the results played out differently in each state.

Republican victories were most pronounced in Pennsylvania, a state flagged early on as this year’s preeminent swing state, where deep dissatisfaction surfaced with the status quo, more often than not to Republicans’ benefit.

Voters had the economy on their minds.

About a third of voters nationwide, including in the blue wall states, said they felt their families were “falling behind” financially, according to AP VoteCast, a survey of more than 120,000 voters nationwide. That was an increase from 2020, when about 2 in 10 felt that way.

Berwood Yost, director of the Center for Opinion Research at Franklin & Marshall College in Pennsylvania, said Democrats had a lot working against them among swing voters: their deteriorating personal finances, fueled by inflation, and the sense that many blamed President Joe Biden.

Yost said Vice President Kamala Harris ran a strong campaign but was unable to overcome those headwinds.

“The mood of the electorate was so negative, they took it out on the incumbent party,” Yost said.

Some voters’ memories of Trump’s presidency improved with the passage of time. VoteCast shows just 40% of Pennsylvania voters said they approve of Biden’s job performance, while 54% said they approved of Trump when he was president. Four years ago, Trump approval in Pennsylvania was 49%.

In his victory over Harris, Trump won Pennsylvania by about 2%, with votes still being counted. That was about three times the margin of his 2016 victory. He lost Pennsylvania by just over 1% in 2020 to Biden.

Trump carried Wisconsin by less than a point, as he did in 2016, after losing it by about a half percentage point in 2020.

In Michigan, Trump won by about 80,000 — many times his nearly 11,000-vote win in 2016 and about half the margin of his loss to Biden in 2020.

In Pennsylvania, Trump gained ground in Democratic-friendly counties statewide, including the Democratic bastion of Philadelphia and heavily populated suburbs that swung hard against Trump in 2016 and 2020.

In Trump-friendly exurbs and rural areas, his margins grew across the board.

His strength also helped David McCormick beat three-term Democratic Sen. Bob Casey, Republicans say, allowing them to reclaim the Senate seat the GOP lost in 2022 when Democrat John Fetterman replaced retiring Republican Sen. Pat Toomey.

In addition, a two-seat pickup shifted the state’s congressional delegation from 9-8 in favor of Democrats to a 10-7 Republicans majority, giving the GOP a valuable boost in its fight to keep House control.

And for the first time since the state attorney general’s office became an elected position in 1980, Republicans will hold all three statewide row offices.