US presidential candidates Donald Trump and Kamala Harris will hold dueling campaign events this weekend in the crucial political battleground state of Pennsylvania.
The former president was scheduled to hold a rally Saturday in Wilkes-Barre in the northeastern part of the state, while the vice president is on a bus tour of western Pennsylvania starting in Pittsburgh on Sunday, before the start of the Democratic National Convention Monday in Chicago.
Separately, Democratic vice presidential candidate and Minnesota governor Tim Walz was scheduled to hold a rally in La Vista, Nebraska, on Saturday.
According to an NYT/Siena College poll released Saturday, Harris now leads Trump among likely voters in Arizona, 50% to 45%, and in North Carolina, 49% to 47%, while trailing in Nevada and Georgia by four points.
But the three critical so-called Rust Belt states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan continue to preoccupy rival campaigns, with Pennsylvania and its 19 Electoral College votes seen as critical to both candidates’ chances of victory in November.
Since 2008, this trio has been a reliable indicator of national election results. Pennsylvania’s Electoral College votes, along with Michigan’s 15 and Wisconsin’s 10 votes, are typically enough to put a candidate ahead of the race to secure the 270-vote total needed to win the White House.
Election forecaster Nate Silver calculates that Pennsylvania is more than twice as likely as any other state to be the “swing” state for presidential victory this fall.
Both campaigns are seeking support among white, non-college-educated voters, with the Harris-Walz ticket seeking to shore up support among suburban voters and boost turnout in the urban areas with large black populations that Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, hope to capture.
Both campaign strategies are considered “win big, lose small,” but with different goals: For Pennsylvania Democrats, that means chasing big margins in the cities and suburbs of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, while limiting losses in rural areas of the state like Beaver County, near Butler, where Trump was shot by a would-be assassin last month.
Trump won Pennsylvania in 2016 by about 44,000 votes, a margin of less than a percentage point, while Biden won by just over 80,000 votes in 2020, a margin of 1.2%.
According to forecaster FiveThirtyEight, Harris is leading Trump by more than 2 percentage points in the state. Recent polls — conducted by Quinnipiac, The New York Times and Siena College — have put Harris ahead by three and four percentage points, respectively, among likely voters in the state.
“The Trump campaign thinks there’s still juice left in that orange for them in the heart of northeastern Pennsylvania,” Pennsylvania Republican consultant Chris Nicholas told the Philadelphia Inquirer last week.
Trump’s rally on Saturday will be held at the indoor Mohegan Sun Arena, which has a capacity of about 8,000. Trump’s campaign has said the candidate will return to Butler in October, but no date has been announced.
Pennsylvania also receives the most campaign funds in the country. The Wall Street Journal calculated that of the more than $110 million spent in seven key states since July 22, when Joe Biden dropped out of reelection, $42 million has gone to the state.
Democratic and Republican political groups also booked $114 million in ad time in Pennsylvania from late August through November, more than double what was planned for Arizona, the second-richest state, at $55 million.
The Pennsylvania campaign is only expected to heat up. Harris, Walz and their spouses will make stops in Allegheny and Beaver counties on Sunday, while Trump will address Harris’ recent economic policy proposals at an event in York, Pennsylvania, on Monday, and Vance will be in Philadelphia.
Pennsylvania will once again be in the spotlight when ABC hosts the first Harris-Trump debate in Philadelphia on September 10.
Reuters contributed to this report
