When Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris pushed her economic agenda, she went to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania’s industrial heartland. When she announced her running mate, she went to Philadelphia. And when she chose the location for former President Barack Obama’s first rally on 10/10, she returned to Pittsburgh again. All in Pennsylvania.
Republican candidate and former President Donald Trump also spent the majority of his advertising budget on Pennsylvania and has held more rallies in the state than any other battleground state since Harris officially entered the race for the White House.
The Key to Winning
In fact, there are seven key battleground states, including Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia, Wisconsin Arizona, North Carolina and Nevada. All play an important role in determining the victory of any candidate.
Pennsylvania, however, stands out as the state most likely to swing the election, according to top strategists for both Ms Harris and Mr Trump.
Both candidates poured more money, time and effort into Pennsylvania than anywhere else. The Democrats and Republicans spent $350 million on television advertising in Pennsylvania, $142 million more than the second-ranked state, Michigan.
There are three reasons why both candidates are focusing on Pennsylvania. First, the state’s size: Its 3 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 2 electoral votes needed to win the election without winning Pennsylvania.
The margin between victory and defeat in Pennsylvania is extremely 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,” Mr. Trump said at a recent rally in the state.
“A miniature version of America”
What makes Pennsylvania such a fierce battleground state for both parties is the state's remarkable combination of demographic and geographic factors.
It is home to urban centers like Philadelphia, which have large concentrations of black voters—a crucial source of Democratic strength—and fast-growing suburbs populated largely by highly educated whites whose support for Republicans has been eroded during the Trump years.
Pennsylvania has struggling industrial towns where Mr. Trump needs to maximize his votes, and smaller cities with booming Latino immigrant populations where Ms. Harris wants to expand her influence.
Pennsylvania also has a large, albeit shrinking, rural population. White voters without college degrees, staunch Trump supporters, still make up 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 member of Mr. Trump’s campaign, the former president sent his running mate, Senator JD Vance (R-Ohio), to more stops in Pennsylvania than anywhere else, the state where Mr. Trump held an exclusive meeting with Sean Hannity on Fox News.
On 2/10, Mr. Trump returned to Pennsylvania to participate in 2 rallies in Scranton and Reading. This was his 8 and 9 rallies in the state since Ms. Harris entered the race.
While former first lady Melania Trump has yet to appear at any campaign rallies, Harris' 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 is no coincidence that at both the Republican and Democratic national conventions, Pennsylvania delegates are well-placed just 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 met Harris, he joked that she should rent an apartment in the state. The vice president laughed, but in fact Harris visited Pennsylvania every three days in September, a remarkable frequency for a battleground state.
Gov. Josh Shapiro, though not selected as Ms. Harris’s vice presidential running mate, has made several appearances in support of her, 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.
According to Harris' campaign, she currently has more than 400 paid staff in more than 50 offices in the state.
The Trump campaign declined to comment on its staff in Pennsylvania but said it had 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 state's House of Representatives is separated by a single seat. The state is also home to one of the most expensive Senate races in the US, and two closely contested House seats could change hands. Congress.
Democrats are optimistic that they have won key races for governor and Senate in recent years, including 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, Democrats outnumbered Republicans by about 916.000 people. By 7/10, 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 attempted assassination of 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 take action,” said Abraham Reynolds, 23, who runs a cleaning business in Pennsylvania and was at the Butler rally in July.
