Pennsylvania emerges as pivotal Harris-Trump battleground

Pennsylvania is shaping up as a challenge for Vice President Harris in the presidential race, as a new CNN poll shows her tied with former President Trump in the state and badly trailing him among male voters.

Democrats are cautiously optimistic Harris could win Pennsylvania despite her problems with white working-class voters, but they acknowledge victory will depend on her ability to get young voters and minority voters to cast ballots in large numbers.

While polls have shown Harris ahead in other “blue wall” states like Michigan and Wisconsin, the CNN poll showed her tied with Trump — at 47 percent — for Pennsylvania’s 19 electoral votes.

The biggest red flag for Harris is that she’s trailing Trump by 15 percentage points among men.

Berwood Yost, the director of the Franklin & Marshall College Poll, said “obviously Pennsylvania’s the biggest prize.”

“And I think it’s the one state Harris really needs to have to make her path to the presidency viable,” he said.

“It’s certainly shaping up to be really close right now. Before Biden dropped out, it was clearly the state that was moving away from Democrats and she certainly righted the ship,” he added.

“Part of what makes Pennsylvania a bit more difficult than other places — and by difficult, we mean competitive — is the fact that there are a sort of range of ideologies across the state,” Yost said, noting the liberal bent of Philadelphia compared to the conservative culture of rural areas.

The CNN survey of likely male voters in Pennsylvania showed Trump with 55 percent support and Harris with 40 percent support. It also showed Harris leading Trump among likely female voters 53 percent to 42 percent.

But unlike in Michigan and Wisconsin, Harris’s advantage with women isn’t big enough in Pennsylvania to make up for her disadvantage among men, according to the CNN survey.

In Michigan and Wisconsin, Harris’s advantage with likely female voters is bigger than Trump’s advantage with likely male voters.

In Michigan, Harris is beating Trump among likely female voters 54 percent to 38 percent, while Trump is leading among likely male voters 50 percent to 42 percent.

And Harris is dominating Trump among likely female voters in Wisconsin, leading Trump 55 percent to 38 percent among those voters. Trump, meanwhile, leads Harris among likely male voters 52 percent to 43 percent.

The CNN poll showed Harris leading Trump 48 percent to 43 percent in Michigan and beating Trump in Wisconsin 50 percent to 44 percent.

Jim McLaughlin, a Republican pollster who has done work for Trump, said “it’s definitely Pennsylvania” where Trump has the best chance of winning a blue wall state.

“It’s the state she and Biden has been to the most,” he said. “The reason they’ve been there a lot is the map doesn’t add up for her without winning Pennsylvania. She’s got to win Pennsylvania, and right now I’d rather be us than them in Pennsylvania.”

McLaughlin cited Trump’s big lead among likely male voters as a key data point in the new CNN poll.

“Donald Trump is up with men by 15,” he said. “Kamala is only up with women 53 to 42.

“She’s got trouble with men. She’s got trouble with working-class men, and she’s got trouble with senior men.”

Democratic strategists, however, counter that Harris can overcome Trump’s lead with those demographic groups by running up her leads with young voters, women and Black and Hispanic voters.

Harris is planning to spend five days in Pennsylvania before her debate with Trump in Philadelphia on Tuesday.

One Democratic strategist said one of Harris’s biggest challenges will be to get younger voters who support her to actually vote. The source said Harris’s decision to bring David Plouffe, former President Obama’s campaign manager, onto her political team appears designed to convert young people’s support into real votes.

“To win in Pennsylvania, you need a strong base of support in the Philadelphia metro area and able to do well in Allegheny County and carry that by a wide margin,” the source said, referring to the county that encompasses Pittsburgh.

President Biden carried Allegheny County, 59 percent to 39 percent, in 2020. Hillary Clinton carried the crucial county by 16 points in 2016, when she lost Pennsylvania to Trump.

A loss in the Keystone State would put pressure on either Harris or Trump to sweep the other swing states in the race.

“There are parts of the state between Allegheny County and Philadelphia that are just not Democratic friendly,” the Democratic strategist warned, emphasizing the importance of winning the urban and suburban precincts by big margins.

Republicans don’t view Pennsylvania as much of a must-win state for themselves as North Carolina or Georgia, for example, given Pennsylvania’s history of voting for Democrats in every presidential election after 1988, except 2016.

Pennsylvania had been a strong state for Biden, and Democrats acknowledge Harris doesn’t have the same strong relationships in the state.

One Democratic strategist based in Pennsylvania told The Hill in July that Harris didn’t have the kind of special relationship with Pennsylvania voters that Biden, who was born in Scranton, did.

“What I find surprising is how few relationships she has here,” the strategist said. “California is very far away. It’s seen as very foreign culturally.

“Everything I’ve always heard is she doesn’t have that many relationships in Pennsylvania and she hasn’t established any kind of identity here,” the source said. “Obviously, it’s a very big difference with Joe Biden.”

Political strategists say that if Harris loses Pennsylvania, it would put the spotlight on her decision to pick Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D), an outspoken progressive, as her running mate instead of Pennsylvania’s popular and more centrist governor, Josh Shapiro.

Yost, the director of the Center for Opinion Research at Franklin & Marshall College, said Harris took a gamble by picking Walz over Shapiro.

“Frankly, if she doesn’t win the state, that choice is going to be talked about going forward,” he said.

He said Republican county chairs were “afraid” of Shapiro.

“He would have really helped put her over the top being on the ticket,” Yost speculated. “One of the reasons I thought [Shapiro] was a good choice is not just that he’s the most popular politician in Pennsylvania. Her taking him as her running mate [would] signal a moderation in her positions.

“The jury’s still out on whether she can make that case,” he said, referring to the need for Harris to convince moderate voters that she’s not the same candidate who endorsed “Medicare for All” and the Green New Deal before the 2020 Democratic presidential primary.

Harris knows that she needs to appeal to the state’s more moderate voters, and she made a move toward them by backing off her previous support for a fracking ban.

“What I have seen is that we can grow, and we can increase a clean energy economy without banning fracking,” she told CNN’s Dana Bash in her first major news interview since the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.  

Democrats expect Trump and his Republican allies to emphasize the economy, inflation, crime and immigration in a frenzied push for Pennsylvania over the next 60 days.

Harris, meanwhile, will emphasize the Biden administration’s accomplishments in creating jobs, investing in the nation’s infrastructure and addressing gun violence. Her campaign will also put a major emphasis on abortion rights and women’s access to health care.