Fierce race in the fiercest battleground state of the 2024 US presidential election

VOV.VN - Both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are pouring more money, time and effort into Pennsylvania than any other state as top strategists consider it the most likely to decide victory or defeat in the race to the White House.

When Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris pushed her economic agenda, she went to Pittsburgh, the industrial heart of Pennsylvania. When she announced her running mate, she went to Philadelphia. And when she picked the location for former President Barack Obama’s first rally on October 10, she returned to Pittsburgh. All in Pennsylvania. Republican Donald Trump also spent the bulk of his advertising budget in Pennsylvania, holding more rallies there than in any other battleground state since Harris officially entered the race.

Both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris have poured more money, time and effort into Pennsylvania than any other battleground state. Photo: NY Times

The Key to Winning

In fact, there are seven major battleground states, including Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia, Wisconsin Arizona, North Carolina and Nevada. All play an important role in determining the victory of any candidate.

But Pennsylvania stands out as the state most likely to swing the election, according to top strategists for both Harris and Trump. Both candidates have poured more money, time and effort into Pennsylvania than anywhere else. Democrats and Republicans have poured $350 million into television advertising in Pennsylvania, $142 million more than the second-place state, Michigan. There are three reasons why both candidates are focusing so heavily on Pennsylvania. First, it’s the size of the state: Its 19 electoral votes are the biggest prize among battleground states. Second, polls have shown the two candidates tied in the state for months. Third, it’s mathematically difficult for either Trump or Harris to reach the 270 electoral votes needed to win without winning Pennsylvania.

Ms. Harris and running mate, Tim Walz, at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania. Photo: NY Times.

The margin of victory in Pennsylvania is incredibly small. In the 2016 election (Trump won Pennsylvania), the margin was just 44,292 votes, fewer than the number of seats in the Pittsburgh Steelers football stadium. “If we win Pennsylvania, we win the whole thing,” Trump said at a recent rally in the state.

“A miniature version of America”

What makes Pennsylvania such a fierce battleground for both parties is the state’s remarkable combination of demographics and geography. It is home to urban centers like Philadelphia that have large concentrations of black voters, a crucial source of Democratic strength. It also has fast-growing suburbs populated largely by highly educated whites whose support Republicans have lost during the Trump years. It has struggling industrial towns where Trump needs to maximize his vote, and smaller cities with booming Latino immigrant populations that Harris wants to expand. It also has a large, albeit shrinking, rural population. White voters without a college degree, Trump’s staunchest supporters, still account for about half of the vote. “Pennsylvania is almost a miniature version of America,” said Pennsylvania Lieutenant Governor (Democratic) Austin Davis.

Tight race for votes

The Pennsylvania campaign is fierce. Harris’s team is running online ads targeting voters in heavily Hispanic areas of eastern Pennsylvania and ads featuring Republicans who voted for her on 130 rural radio stations. According to a Trump campaign official, the former president has sent his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, to more stops in Pennsylvania than anywhere else. The state is also where Trump held an exclusive with Sean Hannity on Fox News.

Former President Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Indiana, Pennsylvania, September 2024. Photo: NY Times

On October 2, Mr. Trump returned to Pennsylvania for two rallies in Scranton and Reading. These were his eighth and ninth rallies in the state since Ms. Harris entered the race. While former first lady Melania Trump has yet to appear on the campaign trail, Ms. Harris’s husband, Doug Emhoff, drank a beer while watching a recent football game in suburban Philadelphia and spoke at a get-out-the-vote concert in Pittsburgh. Both sides have tried to please key Pennsylvania officials and activists. It’s no coincidence that at both the Republican and Democratic national conventions, delegates from Pennsylvania were seated well behind delegates from the candidates’ home states. “Pennsylvania is the center of the universe,” said Cliff Maloney, who leads the effort to get 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. The vice president laughed, but Harris has been in Pennsylvania every three days in September, a remarkable frequency for a battleground state. Gov. Josh Shapiro, who was not chosen as Harris’ vice presidential running mate, has appeared in support of her several times, including at a rally in Wilkes-Barre, at the launch of a bus tour in Philadelphia and at another event with writer Shonda Rhimes in the Philadelphia suburbs. Harris has more than 400 paid staffers in more than 50 offices in the state, according to the Harris campaign. The Trump campaign declined to comment on its Pennsylvania staff but said it has more than 20 offices there.

Optimism on both sides

Pennsylvania is currently the only state where Democrats control one chamber of the state legislature and Republicans control the other. The margin in the state’s lower house is a single seat. The state is also home to one of the most expensive Senate races in the country, and two closely contested House seats that could change control of Congress. Democrats are optimistic that they have won key governor and Senate races in recent years, including in 2022. But Republicans are equally optimistic that the state has seen a sharp increase in voter registration switching to the GOP. When Mr. Trump won Pennsylvania in 2016, there were about 916,000 more Democrats than Republicans. As of October 7, that number had dropped to 325,485. Earlier this year, one of Philadelphia’s most competitive suburban districts, Bucks County, turned Republican by voter registration. By September, Luzerne County, a suburb of Scranton, became the latest to flip Republican. One “X factor” was the impact of the assassination attempt on Mr. Trump in Butler County in July. In interviews, some Trump supporters predicted that the incident could spur more Trump voters to the polls. “It really encouraged me to get out and do something,” said Abraham Reynolds, 23, who runs a cleaning business in Pennsylvania and was at the Butler rally in July.