Last Updated on 04/09/2024 by Arun jain
Two months after the election, things are heating up in swing states, one expert said Newsweek What does he think it will take for the Democratic presidential nominee and vice president? Kamala Harris to win in Pennsylvania.
Millions of dollars are being splashed on fundraisers, hundreds of volunteers are being recruited, and both candidates are traveling the length and breadth of the country in an effort to get votes.
One state in particular where candidates are focusing their efforts is Pennsylvania. Trump is expected to broadcast a pre-recorded town hall speech to voters in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania today after visiting Johnstown on Wednesday — one of several visits to the state this month since he was shot during a July 13 rally in Butler. , to narrowly avoid death.
His visit followed the appearance of Kamala Harris and Joe Biden on Labor Day in Pennsylvania.
With 19 Electoral College votes, the battleground state is crucial for a candidate to win the presidential race. And the polls have indicated that Harris is currently leading in PennsylvaniaTrump’s lead evaporated when she became the nominee in July.
But recent polls suggest Harris’ lead in the state may be narrowing.
A recent survey conducted by Wick and Emerson College between August 25 and 29 found Harris and Trump tied in Pennsylvania. Another recent survey by the Trafalgar Group showed the former president leading by 2 points in the battleground state.
Meanwhile, the RealClearPolitics poll tracker shows Harris leading by just 0.3 points in Pennsylvania, while the Economist’s poll tracker shows him leading by 0.1 points and pollster Nate Silvershows the model of Republicans A 0.5 point gain in last week’s polls in Pennsylvania.
“If she is now tied only in Pennsylvania, in what should be one of her strongest voting periods, that means a bit of an underdog in November,” Silver wrote in his Silver Bulletin newsletter, adds that its model would have expected Harris to see a 2-point bump nationally in the polls. DNC.
However, her post-DNC bump was only 1.2 points, according to Silver’s model, which he attributes in part to her poor performance in Pennsylvania — an important battleground state that determines the crucial 270th Electoral College vote in the election.
Newsweek The Trump and Harris campaigns have been reached for comment by email.
To ensure that Pennsylvania would give Harris a victory, said Robert Spiel, associate professor of political science at Penn State University. Newsweek She needs to avoid making the same mistakes as her predecessors, Hillary Clintonwho lost the state in 2016.
“One of the main goals of the Harris campaign if she wants to win Pennsylvania is to not repeat the mistakes that the Hillary Clinton campaign lost in Pennsylvania in 2016,” he said.
“While the Philadelphia and Pittsburgh metro areas are by far the two largest areas in the state, they only contain about half of the state’s population. In 2016, Clinton herself campaigned almost exclusively in two large metro areas and ignored much of the rest of the state, never visiting Erie County where I live, for example. Trump visited Erie and many small towns in Pennsylvania during the 2016 campaign, and Biden visited Erie in 2020 before winning the county,” Spiel added.
So far, Harris has only visited Pittsburgh. Meanwhile, Trump has visited Jonestown, Butler, Wilkes-Barre and York.
Along with reaching out to other parts of the state, Spiel said Harris needs to focus on balancing his position so he can appeal to a wider cross-section of voters in Pennsylvania.
“Harris also needs to balance her issue positions, as she appears to be trying to do already between different views in different parts of the state. For example, fracking is important to the economy of parts of the southwest and north central parts of the state, but many people in the Philadelphia area and other parts of the state are probably opposed to fracking,” he said.
In an interview with CNN last week, Harris reacted when she appeared to reverse her stance on frackingpreviously supported a national ban on the practice in 2019, she told CNN Dana Bash Nor will she ban fracking as president.
“No, and I made it clear on the debate stage in 2020, I will not ban fracking, as vice president I did not ban fracking and as president I will not ban fracking,” she said, adding that she had not changed her . Condition, “Neither will I go further.”
While recent polls have given Trump the lead, poll trackers still show Harris ahead in Pennsylvania. For example, FiveThirtyEight’s poll tracker shows him 1.2 points ahead of Trump at 45 percent to 46.2 percent.
Meanwhile, FiveThirtyEight’s election forecasting model shows Democrats A swing state is projected to win by 0.7 points.
However, even with Harris in the lead, he may not win in November if he fails to win over voters over age 65, who make up just under 20 percent of the population in Pennsylvania, according to pollster and Democratic political strategist Celinda Lake.
“He’s a little more conservative than most polls were looking at, but I think Pennsylvania is really tight, and there are other battleground states that are moving in Harris’ direction. This is the one that’s a little more resistant,” Lake said 2nd podcast
“Pennsylvania is the oldest of the battleground states…so that age distribution works against Harris,” she said.
Still, Spill is still optimistic about Harris’ chances at state.
“Right now, the momentum seems to be with the Harris campaign. Her candidature has energized young voters, especially women, in urban and suburban areas,” he said.
“But we have two months before the election, with opportunities to change conditions based on debate performance, newly revealed scandals or verbal errors.”
Pennsylvania has voted Democrat in seven of the last eight presidential elections, going for Republicans candidate only in 2016, when Trump won by a narrow margin of 0.7 percentage points.
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