vice president Kamala Harris‘ campaign revealed what he sees as his path to victory in Pennsylvania in a memo shared exclusively with NBC News. Monday night rally in Erie County.
Harris’ team pointed to polls showing Democratic presidential candidate Harris making gains in the suburbs of Pennsylvania, a battleground state he calls “our mini ‘blue wall,'” compared to President Joe Biden’s performance in 2020.
The campaign also emphasized that the victory was about boosting his popularity among educated suburbanites, including those who voted Republican in the last election. About 160,000 voters even after dropping out of the race against former President Donald Trump in the state, he voted for former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley in the GOP presidential primary this year — proving his numbers stronger among suburban voters.
“The Harris campaign’s way to win Pennsylvania is exploiting Trump’s unprecedented weakness in the suburbs,” the memo said, highlighting the campaign’s focus on Haley voters. “After Trump won them in 2020, we turned the suburbs from red to blue, and we also increased our support for women and tripled our support among white college-educated voters in the state.”
The campaign cited surveys conducted last month The Philadelphia Inquirer/The New York Times/Siena College and Marist College Both showed Harris leading Trump by 6 percentage points in the suburbs — a marked improvement from Trump’s 3-point victory over Biden among suburban Pennsylvanians in 2020. as the exit poll shows. (Results from both polls last month were within the margin of error.)
Recent polls have found the overall race in Pennsylvania to be within the polls’ margin of error. Quinnipiac University Harris has 3 points this month Enquirer/Times/Siena The survey scored it 4 points The Wall Street Journal 1 point ahead of Trump.
this the most sought after battlefield on the map, it offers the most Electoral College votes among hotly contested states and is the most common campaign seat for both Harris and Trump.
Brendan McPhillips, a senior adviser to Harris’ Pennsylvania campaign, said Trump’s “weakness in the suburbs means he needs to double and triple his base in the state’s redst counties to really win.” “So we continue to attack and go where he thinks his strength is and where he competes.”
The campaign highlighted events held by Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, in red states like Johnstown, Lancaster and Rochester. He also detailed investments in the state’s red districts to “shrink the margins and end Trump’s only hope of victory,” noting that 16 of the 50 campaign states were in states where Trump won by more than 10 points in 2020.
The last presidential election in Pennsylvania was pretty close. Biden defeated Trump in 2020 by a little more than 1 point. In 2016, Trump beat former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by an even slimmer margin.
“With most polls showing this is the wrong race margin, we’re also starting to grapple with rural voters to cut Trump’s edge — a critical advantage because Trump’s team lacks the core game ability to run simultaneous campaigns of persuasion and mobilization,” he said. The Harris campaign memo reads.
McPhillips said a mere 1-2 point improvement in Biden’s margins in those states would effectively cut off Trump’s path to turning the state red.
“We’re eating away at the edges of it so we can’t sustain the win,” he said. “And that’s how we’re going to beat him and that’s how we can play offensively on multiple fronts.”
The campaign said it knocked on more than 1 million doors in the state as of Sunday, including 250,000 over the weekend, since Harris supplanted Biden atop the Democratic ticket. It also cited its 50 offices and staff of 450 locations.
Harris has so far spent more time in the western part of the state, including rural areas, than in the Philadelphia market, which McPhillips said has helped in part to introduce him to voters who may be less familiar.
for trump billionaire tycoon Elon Musk accelerated Political activity in the state this month through America PAC, which is working to get out the vote for Trump.
McPhillips dismissed the potential impact of the effort.
“They can’t get to the level we are at,” he said. “Even if Elon Musk had the money, you couldn’t spend enough money to scale an operation to match ours. It’s too late. You were supposed to start in March, February, January, and they’ve been calling it for a long time. It will certainly be close. We always planned it to be this way. But this planning shows itself in the fact that we actually had a plan, not a concept.”
The Trump campaign said it discussed a problem the Harris campaign faced in Pennsylvania cities, particularly Philadelphia, which is the state’s top vote-getter for Democrats.
“They may point in the suburbs, but they’re losing ground in places like Philadelphia,” a Trump campaign official said. “That’s why [former President Barack] Obama he was just begging to an African American men to vote for him. They have sounded the alarm and know that they have lost.”
The Trump campaign also pointed to Republicans significantly reducing their Democratic voter registration advantage in the state while shifting Bucks, Luzerne and Beaver counties to Republican registration edges. Even more He emphasized the news that he was a working class voter They hugged Trump in Philadelphia.
Kush Desai, a Pennsylvania spokesman for the Trump campaign, highlighted Obama’s visit as a sign that Harris’ team is struggling. “Obama’s visit will not convince Pennsylvanians to vote for four more years of open borders, rising prices and disaster at home and abroad,” Desai said.
In its memo, the Harris campaign said it believed Biden could “at least” hold on to his support in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia in his victory in those cities four years ago. He gave more details about the statewide Black voters, including the staff he has dedicated to outreach and engagement, and his events targeting Black voters.
last week, Obama made unscripted statements during Pittsburgh campaign stop he said his understanding of the race was, “We’ve never seen the same kind of energy and activism everywhere in our neighborhoods and communities that we’ve seen running. … [T]the hat is more prominent in the brothers.
Wanting to speak directly to black men, he encouraged undecideds to get behind Harris, saying his record deserves their support.
“This is excellence on display and it should be rewarded,” Obama said.
State Sen. Vincent Hughes told NBC News that he “can understand the frustration” Obama expressed.
“Maybe the tone should have been a little different,” he said. “But let’s clarify this issue. Let’s get to the point of what he said. There is nothing in Donald Trump’s past, his career, that would make any citizen, not even black people, vote for him. He is not a successful businessman. … He was sued for housing discrimination.”
Hughes said the Harris campaign will hit its targets among both black men and voters in Philadelphia, adding that he has seen a flood of campaign activity there recently, surpassing what Democrats did in 2020 during the worst of the Covid pandemic.
“It’s going the right way for the vice president,” he said. “Look, it’s always harder for a woman and a Black woman. It’s not fair, it’s not right, but it’s always harder. Maybe if we pass this election, we can finally break that glass ceiling and not make it difficult for the next election.”