For Democrats and the GOP, victory runs through Pennsylvania.
The penultimate poll of the state by Siena College for The New York Times and the Philadelphia Inquirer finds Democratic nominee Kamala Harris ahead of Donald Trump by 4 percentage points among likely voters.
The candidates held dueling rallies in the Keystone State on Monday—Harris in Erie, and Trump at a town hall in Oaks—as their campaigns heavily target the state’s 19 electoral votes. Each focused on the economy, small businesses, home ownership, and inflation before things got, well, different.
After Harris played a clip of a recent interview with Trump where he pledged to use the military to go after Americans with liberal political views—adding to a chorus of authors and scholars blasting it as autocratic—she made the stakes of the race clear.
“We know who he would target because he’s attacked them before: journalists whose stories he doesn’t like, election officials who refuse to cheat … judges who insist on following the law instead of bending to his will,” Harris said. “This is among the reasons I believe so strongly that a second Trump term would be a huge risk for America, and dangerous.”
When her rally-goers started chanting, “Lock him up,” mimicking MAGA’s 2016 rally cries against Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, Harris told them, “The courts will handle that. Let’s handle November, shall we?”
Trump’s town hall was perhaps the most bizarre one he’s held.
Before he swayed and danced for nearly 40 minutes on stage to songs like “Ave Maria,” “Hallelujah,” he praised his relationship with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, saying about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, “[Putin] would’ve never done that with me.”
As Daily Kos reported, Trump faces renewed controversy with his Russian pal after journalist Bob Woodward’s latest book revealed that Trump has spoken with Putin at least seven times since leaving office.
Trump has held four campaign events in Pennsylvania since the start of October, according to VoteHub, a nonpartisan organization that tracks the campaigns. That includes a stop Trump made last week in President Joe Biden’s hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania.
Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, was in the Keystone State on Saturday as well. He attacked the pro-labor Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act and made clear that a Trump administration would oppose the union-backed legislation.
“The problem with the PRO Act is, in some ways, it doubles down on a lot of the failed things that we’ve done,” Vance said at a rally in Johnstown, Pennsylvania.
This is legislation that AFL-CIO, the country’s largest federation of unions, called “the most significant worker empowerment legislation since the Great Depression.” That matters in Pennsylvania, which has more labor unions on average compared with the rest of the U.S.
On the Democratic side, second gentleman Doug Emhoff recently spent his 60th birthday campaigning in Philadelphia. And the Harris campaign announced that her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, will spend Tuesday making at least three stops in Western Pennsylvania.
It’s worth remembering that in 2020, Biden won the state by a nail-biting 1.2 points. And it took four long, sleepless days of vote-counting for the Associated Press to call the race.
This time around, Americans should expect Pennsylvania to take its time counting every vote due to a state provision that allows for ballot counting to start at only at 7 AM ET on Election Day.
“Donald Trump and his offspring have lost every race since 2016 in Pennsylvania, every statewide race, and by the way, even some races for school board and local races,” said Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro to CNN on Sunday. “They don’t have a particularly strong track record in Pennsylvania.”
The campaign has made a point to travel into rural areas in Pennsylvania. When CNN asked Shapiro whether he thought this was an effective strategy, he replied, “I do. . . I’d rather be us than them.”
Campaign Action
