Philadelphia Inquirer notices how Obama made major inroads in Lancaster County:

Among 67 counties in Pennsylvania, Lancaster was the place where, percentage-wise, the Democrats made their biggest top-of-the-ticket gains compared with 2004.

Analysts said that was partly due to population changes in the fast-growing Pennsylvania Dutch region, partly due to voter alienation from President Bush (even among hard-core Republicans), and partly due to Sen. Barack Obama’s persistent efforts to woo the county, which he visited three times.

Though Sen. John McCain won with 55.6 percent of the vote, Obama - branded by his foe as the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate - got 43.5 percent.

That’s no big deal, you say. Well, consider that Sen. John Kerry got just 33.6 percent in 2004, that Vice President Al Gore got just 31.4 percent in 2000, and that President Bill Clinton got just 34.6 percent in 1996.

Obama’s 10-point improvement over Kerry’s performance may be yet another signal that a bigger, wealthier and better-educated Lancaster County slowly is being drawn into the long arms of metropolitan areas to the east and south - not just Philadelphia, but also Baltimore and Washington.

We’ve said it several times now - the more urban/suburban Lancaster County becomes, the more the GOP stranglehold will be loosened.

But:

But [former Intell writer Gil] Delaney, who covered politics for 31 years, cautioned against seeing a strong trend in Obama’s respectable showing.

Outside of the city of Lancaster, Democrats are a long way from having much, if any, local power. And in other statewide races this year, Lancaster County delivered its usual overwhelming majorities for the GOP.

Well, not completely true. Millersville and Lancaster Township now have Democratic pluralities; Manheim Township will trend significantly more Democratic than in the past. So will East Hempfield.

More than a quarter of all Lancaster County residents live in these municipalities. True, if Obama screws up, they could vote Republican. And further out in the county, voters are indeed still rock-solid Republican.

But as in the country as a whole, demographics are on the Democrats’ side here - as Berwood Yost notes:

“By want of growth, Lancaster County will continue to change demographically,” Yost said. “And those changes, I think, will tend to move us toward more competitive politics.”