Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Kamala Harris will hold campaign events this weekend in Pennsylvania, a political battleground state that could be the most crucial state in the Nov. 5 presidential election.
Former President Trump will hold a rally in Wilkes-Barre in the northeastern part of the state on Saturday. Vice President Harris will take a bus tour of western Pennsylvania, starting in Pittsburgh on Sunday, ahead of the start of the Democratic National Convention on Monday in Chicago.
Pennsylvania was one of three Rust Belt states, along with Wisconsin and Michigan, that helped power Trump’s unexpected victory in 2016. President Joe Biden, who grew up in Scranton, Pennsylvania, flipped all three back to the Democrats in 2020.
These three states are truly decisive – they are the only states in America that have voted for the eventual winner of the presidential race in every cycle since 2008.
With 19 of the 270 electoral votes needed to secure the White House, compared with 15 in Michigan and 10 in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania could be the biggest prize in November’s election.
A statistical model built by election forecaster Nate Silver estimates that Pennsylvania is more than twice as likely as any other state to become a “tipping point” state — the state whose electoral votes push either Harris or Trump over the top.
Harris’ entry into the race after Biden ended his re-election bid last month has upended the contest, erasing the lead Trump built during the final weeks of Biden’s shaky campaign. Harris is leading Trump by more than 2 percentage points in Pennsylvania, according to poll tracking website Five Thirty Eight.
Trump won Pennsylvania in 2016 by about 44,000 votes, a margin of less than one percent, while Biden won by more than 80,000 votes, a difference of 1.2%.
Both campaigns have made the state a top priority, including advertising across Hawaii. More than $110 million has been spent on advertising in seven swing states since Biden dropped out in late July, with nearly $42 million of that spent in Pennsylvania, more than twice as much as any other state, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday, citing data from tracking site AdImpact.
According to AdImpact, Democratic and Republican groups have reserved $114 million for ad time in Pennsylvania from the end of August until the election, more than double the $55 million reserved in Arizona, the next-largest total. Those figures are sure to rise, according to the firm, as the Harris campaign has not yet made any reservations for after Labor Day on Sept. 2.
Both Trump and Harris have visited the state more than a half-dozen times this year. On July 13, Trump was attacked during his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, in which he was injured.
He has said he will return to Butler in October, and he also announced he will deliver remarks on the economy at a campaign event in York, Pennsylvania, on Monday. Trump’s running mate Senator J.D. Vance will also deliver remarks in Philadelphia that same day.
Trump’s visit to Wilkes-Barre in Luzerne County on Saturday is aimed at solidifying support among the white, non-college-educated voters who carried him to victory in 2016. The blue-collar county voted Democratic for decades before swinging heavily in Trump’s favor in 2016, mirroring other similar regions across the country.
Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, will make several stops in Allegheny and Beaver counties on Sunday, according to the campaign. This is the first time Harris, Walz and their spouses are campaigning together since their first presidential rally in Philadelphia earlier this month.
Pennsylvania was central to Biden’s winning 2020 strategy in the Rust Belt states: limiting Trump’s margins among working-class white voters while building majorities among suburban voters and boosting high turnout in urban areas with large Black populations.
The Harris campaign is also employing a similar “win big, lose small” strategy, aiming to win by large margins in the cities and suburbs of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh while limiting losses in smaller counties such as Beaver County, where Trump won 58% of the vote in 2020.