How Kamala Harris could beat Donald Trump in Pennsylvania

With two months to go until the election, things are heating up in key states, and one expert said Newsweek Magazine what he thinks it will take for Democratic presidential nominee and Vice President Kamala Harris to win in Pennsylvania.

Millions of dollars are being spent on fundraising, hundreds of volunteers are being hired, and both candidates are traveling across the country in an effort to get out the vote.

One state in particular where the candidates are focusing their efforts is Pennsylvania. Trump is expected to broadcast a pre-recorded speech to voters in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, today after visiting Johnstown on Wednesday, one of several visits he has made to the state this month after he was shot during a July 13 rally in Butler, where he nearly died.

His visit followed an appearance by Kamala Harris and Joe Biden in Pennsylvania on Labor Day.

With 19 Electoral College votes, this key state is one that a candidate needs to win in the presidential race. And polls indicate that Harris is currently ahead in Pennsylvania, having evaporated Trump’s advantage when she became the candidate in July.

But recent polls suggest Harris’ lead in the state may be narrowing.

The latest polls conducted by Wick and Emerson College between August 25 and 29 showed Harris and Trump tied in Pennsylvania. Another recent poll by Trafalgar Group showed the former president leading by 2 points in the battleground state.

Meanwhile, poll tracker RealClearPolitics shows Harris leading by just 0.3 points in Pennsylvania, while The Economist’s poll tracker shows her up by 0.1 points, and pollster Nate Silver’s model shows Republicans have gained 0.5 points in polls in Pennsylvania in the past week.

“If she is only tied in Pennsylvania now, during what should be one of her strongest polling periods, that implies she is a slight underdog in November,” Silver wrote in his Silver Bulletin newsletter, adding that his model would have expected Harris to see a 2-point increase nationally in the polls after the DNC.

However, his post-Democratic National Convention surge was just 1.2 points according to Silver’s model, which he attributes in part to his poor performance in Pennsylvania, a key swing state that is likely to be the tipping point in the election and determine who secures the crucial 270th Electoral College vote.

To ensure Pennsylvania delivers a win for Harris, Robert Speel, associate professor of political science at Pennsylvania State University, said: Newsweek Magazine who must avoid making the same mistakes as his predecessor, Hillary Clinton, who lost the state in 2016.

“A key goal for Harris’ campaign if she wants to win Pennsylvania is to not repeat the mistakes Hillary Clinton’s campaign made in 2016 when she lost Pennsylvania,” he said.

“While the Philadelphia and Pittsburgh metropolitan areas are the state’s two largest by far, they are home to only half of the state’s population. In 2016, Clinton herself campaigned almost exclusively in the two large metropolitan areas and ignored much of the rest of the state — for example, she never visited Erie County, where I live. Trump did visit Erie and many of Pennsylvania’s smaller towns during the 2016 campaign, and Biden visited Erie in 2020 before winning the county,” Speel added.

So far, Harris has only visited Pittsburgh, while Trump has visited Johnstown, Butler, Wilkes-Barre and York.

In addition to reaching out to other parts of the state, Speel said Harris needs to focus on balancing her positions so she can appeal to a broad spectrum of voters across Pennsylvania.

“Harris also needs to balance his positions on issues, as he already appears to be trying to do, between differing opinions in different parts of the state. For example, fracking is important to the economies 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 likely to oppose fracking,” he said.

In an interview with CNN last week, Harris sparked backlash when she appeared to reverse her stance on fracking, having previously supported a nationwide ban on the practice in 2019. She told CNN’s Dana Bash that she would not ban fracking as president.

“No, and I made that clear in the 2020 debate: I would not ban fracking. As vice president, I did not ban fracking, and as president, I will not ban fracking,” she said, adding that she has not changed her position, “nor will I do so in the future.”

While recent polls have given Trump a lead, poll trackers still show Harris leading in Pennsylvania. For example, FiveThirtyEight’s poll tracker shows her leading by 1.2 points, at 46.2 percent to Trump’s 45 percent.

Meanwhile, FiveThirtyEight’s election forecasting model shows Democrats are projected to win the key state by 0.7 points.

But even though Harris is in the lead, she may not win in November if she fails to win over voters over 65, who make up just under 20 percent of Pennsylvania’s population, according to Democratic pollster and political strategist Celinda Lake.

“It’s a little bit more conservative than most of the polls that have been out there, but I think Pennsylvania is very close and there are other battleground states that have been moving in Harris’s direction. This has been one that’s been a little bit more resilient,” Lake told the BBC. 2 ways podcast.

“Pennsylvania is the oldest battleground state… so that age distribution works against Harris,” he said.

Still, Speel remains optimistic about Harris’s chances in the state.

“Right now, the momentum appears to be on the side of Harris’ campaign. Her candidacy has excited younger voters, especially women, in urban and suburban areas,” he said.

“But we still have two months before the election, with the potential for conditions to change based on debate results, newly revealed scandals or verbal gaffes.”

Pennsylvania has voted Democratic in seven of the last eight presidential elections, opting for the Republican candidate only in 2016, when Trump won by a narrow margin of 0.7 percent.

Newsweek Magazine has reached out to the Trump and Harris campaigns for comment via email.