(Dan Tri) - With 19 electoral votes, Pennsylvania is considered the most fiercely competitive battlefield between Mr. Trump and Ms. Harris ahead of the 2024 US presidential election.
With 19 electoral votes, Pennsylvania is a very important state in the US presidential race (Graphic: Al Jazeera)
On July 21, Matt Roan, the leader of the Democratic Party in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, hosted a meeting with volunteers. In the middle of the meeting, Roan abruptly announced that President Joe Biden would drop out of the presidential race. "The general mood seemed to be one of sadness - and then it turned to hope," Roan recalled. Although he appreciated Biden, the Democratic official said his prospects were not high. Since Harris entered the race, Roan has attracted more volunteers. In 2016, Trump won Cumberland County by 18 percentage points. By 2020, that number was only 11%. If she can reverse the trend in this year's election in Cumberland and surrounding areas, Harris will win Pennsylvania - and most likely the US presidency. Both Democrats and Republicans see Pennsylvania as a key part of the election. This is not without foundation. The Economist 's forecasting model estimates that Pennsylvania - with its 19 electoral votes - will be more decisive in deciding the election than any other state. According to US rules, a candidate who wins at least 270 electoral votes wins the election. If he loses this state, Mr. Trump has only about a 7% chance of winning. In 2016, Mr. Trump won Pennsylvania by a narrow margin. Four years later, he lost by only about 80,000 votes. Candidates spend a lot of money on campaigning
Republican candidate Kamala Harris at an event in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on September 17 (Photo: Reuters).
No state has attracted more campaign money than Pennsylvania this election. Of the more than $830 million Harris and her allies have raised (as of mid-September), about $164 million has gone to the state. Trump’s campaign has spent an even larger share of the state’s money: about $136 million of the $459 million it has raised. Pennsylvanians are constantly bombarded with ads from one of the two candidates whenever they turn on their televisions, watch YouTube videos, listen to music, or listen to the radio. While Harris has been pitching herself to voters while attacking Trump, Trump has focused his energy on attacking Harris on issues like ideology, inflation, and immigrant crime. Trump has also noted that Harris once opposed shale gas drilling, an industry vital to western Pennsylvania, although she has now come out in favor of it. But not all Pennsylvania voters are concerned about the gas industry, especially in other parts of the state. “ Politicians shouldn’t assume that Pennsylvania is a state that is uniformly supportive of continued energy exploration,” said Stephen Bloom, vice president of the right-wing think tank Commonwealth Foundation. Stella Sexton, vice chair of the Lancaster County Democratic Committee, said she hasn’t heard voters mention the shale gas industry on the campaign trail. Instead, she hears more about the cost of living and abortion rights. For years, Pennsylvania was a Democratic-leaning state — though it still voted for moderate Republicans. But in the last two elections (2016 and 2020), voters in the state were 3% more likely to vote Republican than the national average. Since 2008, the percentage of registered Democrats has fallen — while the percentage of registered Republicans has risen. Since the start of the year, Republicans have added more new voters than Democrats each month, while Democrats argue that independents are moving leftward — giving the party an advantage.
Mr. Trump campaigned in Pennsylvania in mid-April (Source: Reuters).
The Harris campaign is proud of its work in Pennsylvania. It has more than 350 staffers across the state — including 16 in rural areas where Trump won by more than 10 percentage points four years ago. The Democrats’ plan is to appeal to a segment of voters in heavily Republican-leaning areas — where Harris is unlikely to lead. For Republicans, though, the significance of the campaign is small. “They’re trying to do better in rural counties,” said Mark Harris, a Republican strategist. “This election is going to be another deeply divided election between densely populated suburbs and suburban or rural communities.” The Republicans’ operations are somewhat more dispersed. They’ve deployed multiple groups to get Republican-leaning voters out — with mail -in voting a central focus. Trump opposed the ballot box in 2020, but he has changed his stance to reduce the Democrats’ advantage. If Trump can win Pennsylvania, he will demonstrate his ability to build coalitions between white, working-class voters and religious voters, as well as attract “significant new minority voters,” according to Republican strategist Ryan Shafik. To win, by contrast, Harris will need to follow Biden’s strategy from four years ago: building coalitions between urban and minority voters, and “attacking” the suburbs. According to an average of polling data compiled by FiveThirtyEight , Harris leads by less than 2 percentage points in Pennsylvania. That small number seems insignificant given the money still pouring into the state, the Economist notes.Dantri.vn
Source: https://dantri.com.vn/the-gioi/dau-la-bang-quan-trong-nhat-trong-bau-cu-tong-thong-my-2024-20240930091527142.htm
Comment (0)