Former President Donald Trump and JD Vance are in the middle of an all-out blitz in Pennsylvania, putting more emphasis on campaigning in the commonwealth than perhaps any other state.
While Trump is looking to eat into Kamala Harris’ numbers all over the state, his campaign’s visits have predominantly centered on the rural and working-class stretches of Pennsylvania he won in 2016 and 2020. Just this week, Trump visited York, in the central part of the state, and Wilkes-Barre, in the northeast. And GOP sources told NOTUS to expect much more campaigning in those sorts of areas, from both Trump and particularly Vance.
It’s hardly an exaggeration to say the path to 270, for either candidate, goes through Pennsylvania. But Trump and Vance’s recent emphasis on the Keystone State, even above other swing states, is potentially indicative of the shift both parties have seen since Harris became the Democratic Party’s nominee.
Craig Snyder leads Haley Voters for Harris and was chief of staff to former Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter. And while Snyder said it’s possible for Trump to win without Pennsylvania, he emphasized that Harris potentially picking up some Sun Belt states that previously looked lost could actually make the commonwealth essential for Trump.
“Now that we’re in the real race that we’re actually in, I think Pennsylvania may have, in fact, become indispensable for Trump in a way that it just wasn’t before,” Snyder said.
Republican strategists that spoke to NOTUS pointed to several factors that have shifted their attention toward Pennsylvania. For one, they think Harris’ choice of Tim Walz for vice president over Josh Shapiro — the popular Pennsylvania governor who’s garnered support among independent and even Republican voters — leaves an opening for Trump.
For another, they also think Trump’s choice of Vance as his running mate helps their team in the state. And they see the shift from Biden to Harris as another opportunity.
“Pennsylvania knows full well how much of a disaster Kamala Harris has been,” Pennsylvania Team Trump spokesperson Kush Desai said in a statement. “Whether it’s anti-energy policies driving up gas prices, surging crime, or failed Democrat policies crushing families at every corner, Pennsylvanians are ready to reject the dangerously incompetent and dangerously liberal Kamala and send President Donald J. Trump back to the White House.”
A Trump campaign official specifically mentioned the northeastern and northwestern parts of Pennsylvania as some of the main points of focus for Trump — areas where he lost ground in 2020 compared to his victory four years prior.
The official also said to expect the campaign to roll out different messages for different areas of the state.
“What kind of matters in eastern Pennsylvania is kind of different than what matters in western Pennsylvania,” this person said, specifically mentioning how the Trump campaign would focus on energy and trade in the western part of the state.
But again, the Trump campaign sees opportunities all over the state.
“Joe Biden had ties to Scranton and at least pretended that he cared about the American energy industry,” a Republican National Committee official told NOTUS. “Kamala Harris supports the Green New Deal and has launched a kind of open warfare against the energy industry. And that is such a key block in Pennsylvania that we think it really changes the dynamic.”
Recent polls actually show Harris doing better than Trump in the state, despite the opposite being true when it was Biden on the top of the Democratic ticket. But Republicans brush off those polls, attributing the shift to a “sugar high” surrounding Harris’ candidacy — and the fact that people still tie Harris to Biden.
“I do think that’s a bit of a sugar high, because they pushed Biden off the ballot and replaced him with Kamala Harris,” RNC Chair Michael Whatley told NOTUS. “And people are showing excitement around her candidacy because people don’t know who she is.”
Whatley continued that voters are regarding Harris as a “generic Democrat” at the moment.
“The more that Pennsylvania voters get a chance to hear from her and see her and understand that she is the most radical liberal candidate that the Democrats have ever put up, we’re going to see those numbers normalize back to President Trump,” he said.
On the nuts-and-bolts portion of the campaign strategy, Whatley said Republicans are focusing on “get out the vote and protect the ballot” initiatives to mobilize voters and encourage others to vote too.
“When we talk about, you know, get out the vote, it really comes down to making sure that our base, who are going to be with President Trump no matter what are doing more than just voting, that they’re actually going out having conversations with other voters and making sure that they get them to commit,” Whatley said.
Another Republican familiar with the campaign’s strategy told NOTUS that get-out-the-vote initiative includes ensuring that voters are on Pennsylvania’s automatic mail-in ballot list so they can be certain they will receive a ballot when it comes time to vote.
The source explained how the campaign and the RNC invested time and effort into getting voters on this roll because it eliminated the stress of having to remember to request a ballot.
If Democrats are taking advantage of Pennsylvania’s mail-in voting practices, the Republican familiar with the campaign’s strategy said, “then we should do it as well.”
GOP sources also said a big part of their strategy is sending Vance to the state a lot over the next 75 days, with one source close to Vance saying that people can expect the running mate to “spend more time in Pennsylvania over the next 75 days than any other state in the country.”
“You’re gonna be seeing a lot more JD Vance in the state, especially in the western part of the state,” the Republican familiar with the campaign’s strategy said, arguing that Vance “appeals to those voters.”
“That’s kind of the theory behind picking him, and so the hope is that he’s able to turn some folks out there and get folks motivated there,” this person said.
Whatley agreed, arguing that, because Vance was successful in business and politics but had “never forgotten where he came from,” that was “something that resonates very, very well across rural Pennsylvania.”
Meanwhile, on the Democratic side, a senior adviser for the Harris for Pennsylvania campaign said their focus on Pennsylvania goes back to Trump narrowly winning the state in 2016.
“It was like a wake-up call that put it in the top shelf of priorities for the party,” the adviser said.
For the Harris campaign, that means a combination of rallies with thousands, like in Philadelphia, but also intimate gatherings, like Harris and Walz’s bus tour through the western part of the state before the Democratic National Convention. It’s all part of their strategy to close the margins in the red areas where they expect Trump to win.
“There’s a certain measure of Trump fatigue in some of those areas,” Snyder said. “I don’t want to overstate this: He will win those areas. It’s a question of margins, and the margins may be reduced because of a greater number of Republicans who are disaffected.”
The senior Harris adviser emphasized that Democrats would be looking to improve their margins all over the state.
“We’re going everywhere and not taking any vote for granted, no matter if it’s in deep-blue Allegheny or Philadelphia counties, or if we’re venturing off into other places like Beaver, Lancaster, wherever it may be,” the senior Harris adviser said.
Former Rep. Jim Greenwood, a longtime Republican congressman who represented Bucks County before becoming a powerful lobbyist for pharmaceutical companies, is co-leading Pennsylvania Republicans for Harris. Greenwood said the race in Trump counties will come down to turnout and enthusiasm — and he sees Harris having the upper hand on both fronts.
“In rural Pennsylvania, it’s a question among the Trump voters of 2020 of how many has he lost,” Greenwood said. “He certainly hasn’t done anything to add more to his support in those areas.”
One message Trump has been parroting throughout his stops in Pennsylvania is how Harris passed over Shapiro as her running mate, baselessly attributing that decision to Shapiro being Jewish.
“She turned down your governor, by the way, just so you understand. I know some of you probably like him. I don’t think he’s a good person. I don’t think he’s good. I don’t think he’s good, but they turned him down because he’s Jewish,” Trump told the crowd in Wilkes-Barre on Saturday.
Despite Shapiro’s popularity in the state — a recent Emerson College poll found that he holds a 51% approval rating among Pennsylvanians and a 31% disapproval rating — Trump has continued to rail against him. In a late-night Truth Social post on Wednesday, Trump called Shapiro the “highly overrated Jewish Governor” and said that “Shapiro has done nothing for Israel, and never will.”
When Harris chose Walz as her running mate, there was a relief among the Trump campaign, the Republican familiar with the campaign’s strategy told NOTUS.
“Her not choosing Shapiro as a running mate will come back to be perhaps the worst political decision of the cycle,” the Republican familiar with the campaign’s strategy said. “Because I think picking Shapiro would help put this away for them. And it was a glimmer of light when she didn’t for the Trump folks.”
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Katherine Swartz is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow. Reese Gorman is a reporter at NOTUS.