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The 2024 election has been full of surprises but one thing is for certain: Donald Trump has his eyes on Pennsylvania, the largest battleground state on the electoral map.
Trump has visited the state more than seven times this year, including an event on Monday at Precision Custom Components, a precision manufacturer in York, where he accused Kamala Harris of being an “economic wrecker” whose policies would “set the world on fire.”
The Harris-Walz campaign is eyeing Pennsylvania, too. The state’s governor, Josh Shapiro, was reportedly on the very short list to be Harris’s running mate.
Though he ultimately lost out to Minnesota governor Tim Walz, the campaign nonetheless debuted its ticket earlier this month in Philadelphia, with an assist from Shapiro, at Temple University.
The state presents different advantages to both campaigns.
It has a large population of white, working class voters in rural and deindustrialized areas, who’ve been trending Republican. The state is also home to densely populated, more liberal cities, with large Black populations, who typically vote for Democrats.
“It’s been the prime target for Trump’s message when it comes to tariffs, when it comes to immigration, messages against globalization,” Neil Makhija, a county commissioner outside of Philadelphia, told The Wall Street Journal.
The state’s 19 electoral votes have gone back and forth in recent years. Biden flipped Pennsylvania in 2020, after Trump narrowly won in 2016.
In 2020, Philadelphia became a focus of Trump’s continued false assertions about a stolen election, as were other cities with large populations of color like Atlanta, Milwaukee, and Phoenix.
Both campaigns have taken different approaches to winning over Pennsylvania’s working class voters.
Trump has promised to impose harsh tariffs on US trading partners and ramp up fossil fuel production, a message sure to resonate in a state with a large fracking industry.
Harris, meanwhile, has sought to win back some of the traditional union base of the Democratic party, attending a meeting with the Service Employees International Union outside of Pittsburgh, while promising other interventions on big business like a plan to tackle price gouging.
