Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are pouring more money, time and energy into Pennsylvania than anywhere else.
It would be very difficult for either former President Donald Trump or Vice President Kamala Harris to win at least 270 electoral votes without winning Pennsylvania. Photo: New York TimesWhen Vice President Kamala Harris laid out her economic agenda, she went to Pittsburgh. When she announced her running mate, she went to Philadelphia. And when it came time to pick a location for Barack Obama’s first rally on October 10, she returned to Pittsburgh. Both cities are in Pennsylvania.
Former President Donald Trump also devoted the bulk of his advertising budget to Pennsylvania and has held more rallies in the state than any other battleground since Ms. Harris entered the race, including two on October 9 and three last week.
There are seven key battlegrounds in the 2024 race for the White House, all of them crucial. But Pennsylvania stands out as the state that top strategists for both Harris and Trump have flagged as the most likely to swing the election.
Part of Pennsylvania’s importance is its sheer size: The state’s 19 electoral votes are the biggest prize of any battleground. Part of it is polling: The two rivals have been virtually tied in the state for months. And part of it is math: It would be difficult for Mr. Trump and Ms. Harris to reach the 270 electoral votes needed for victory without Pennsylvania.
“If we win Pennsylvania, we win the whole thing,” Mr. Trump said at a recent rally in the state.
What makes Pennsylvania so attractive, and puzzling, to both parties is the state's unusual combination of demographic and geographic forces.
There are urban centers like Philadelphia with large pockets of black voters that Democrats need to mobilize. There are fast-growing, highly educated, largely white suburbs where Republicans have lost ground during the Trump years. There are struggling industrial towns where Trump needs to maximize his vote, and smaller cities booming with Latino immigrants where Harris wants to make gains. And there is a significant, though shrinking, rural population. White voters without college degrees, who make up Trump’s base, still turn out about half the vote.
“This is almost a microcosm of America,” said Austin Davis, Pennsylvania's Democratic lieutenant governor.
The Pennsylvania campaign is fierce and ubiquitous, with implications for the entire country. Harris is running online ads targeting voters in heavily Hispanic areas of eastern Pennsylvania and ads on 130 rural radio stations. Her team said it knocked on 100,000 doors in the state last Saturday (Oct. 4), the first time the campaign has reached that number in a single day.
According to a campaign official, Mr. Trump sent his running mate, Senator J.D. Vance, to more stops in Pennsylvania than any other state, and the state is also where Mr. Trump held his only town hall meeting.
On October 9, Mr. Trump returned to Pennsylvania for two rallies, in Scranton and Reading, his eighth and ninth events in the state since Ms. Harris entered the race. In Reading, a predominantly Hispanic city, Mr. Trump offered free haircuts on Sundays in honor of Hispanic Heritage Month.
And while former first lady Melania Trump has yet to campaign anywhere, Harris’s husband, Doug Emhoff, drank a beer at a recent football game in suburban Philadelphia and spoke at a big get-out-the-vote concert last week in Pittsburgh.
The campaigns even tried to please key Pennsylvania activists and officials.
“It’s the center of the universe,” said Cliff Maloney, who is leading a multimillion-dollar effort called Pennsylvania Chase to get more Republicans to vote by mail in the state.
Lt. Gov. Austin Davis said the last time he saw Harris, he joked that she should rent an apartment in the state. She laughed. But in September, Harris spent one out of every three days in Pennsylvania — a remarkable number for a single battleground.
According to Ms. Harris’s campaign, it currently has more than 400 staffers on its payroll in the state, spread across 50 offices. Mr. Trump’s campaign declined to comment on its Pennsylvania staff but said it has more than two dozen offices in the state.
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