In the last month alone, the race for the U.S. presidency on Nov. 5 has undergone a tsunami of unprecedented moments that have cut deep into a nation already splintered by political and ideological division.

• On June 27, 81-year-old President Joe Biden faced off against Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in their first debate in Atlanta. Throughout the debate, Biden labored to complete sentences and struggled to hold on to his train of thought. As the debate wore on, it became clear that any case Biden had that would prove him worthy of a second term as the leader of the free world vanished in the fog of a verbal vortex.
• On July 14, while speaking at a rally in Butler, Pa., Trump was wounded during an assassination attempt. With blood trickling down his face, the 45th President pumped his fist three times as he was carried off the stage by secret security officials.

• On July 21, for the first time since Lyndon Johnson dropped out of a bid for reelection to the presidency in 1968, Biden – under mounting pressure by his political peers to do so – declared on X that he would end his campaign for reelection “in the best interest of my party and the country.” In the letter, Biden supported Vice President Kamala Harris to become the Democratic nominee.

Evenly divided support for Trump and Harris in Pennsylvania

Less than two weeks later and with just three months before the election, Harris has emerged as the Democratic front-runner in a campaign that will need to go through Trump, and in the opinion of every political soothsayer, the pathway to the presidency for either candidate needs to go through the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, as well.

Despite the fact that Harris has received round-the-clock media attention and accumulated a war chest of $200 million in donations, a new survey conducted of 800 Pennsylvania voters between July 23 and July 25 by the Commonwealth Foundation indicated that public support for Trump and Harris remains evenly divided in Pennsylvania, with Harris leading Trump 47 percent to 46 percent in a head-to-head ballot matchup. 

Despite the current deadlock, political experts in Chester County believe that Biden’s decision not to seek a second term has invigorated his party.

“A new spirit has come up in the Democratic party,” said Dr. Chieke E. Ihejirika, the chair of Political Science Department at Lincoln University. “A lot of my colleagues were worried about the enthusiasm gap when Biden was at the top of the ticket, but the enthusiasm we have seen over the last few days are what elections are won by.”

“Politically, there is no question that I had never seen Democrats as demoralized and despondent as they were [before Biden ended his campaign],” said Dr. John Kennedy, a political science professor at West Chester University and the author of Pennsylvania Elections, which explores voting trends across the state. “It had reached the point where there was some discussion of the party to abandon the ticket and just try to salvage the House and Senate. The script has now been flipped, and the message that the Republicans had lined up – Biden’s advanced age -- is no longer available to attack. There is much more energy and enthusiasm from the Democrats, and for the Republicans, who were perhaps a little over-confident after their recent convention, will now have to refocus, regroup and redefine their campaign.”

As has been well documented from the start of the respective campaigns of Trump and Harris, the proverbial march to secure the 270 electoral college votes needed to win the presidency will likely come down to the final tally in seven key battleground states – Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Of those, the Commonwealth’s 19 electoral college votes are the highest on that list and recent presidential elections here have provided no pattern of consistency to suggest how and where the pendulum will lean this November. In 2020, Biden won the state by a slim 1.2 percentage points, but Trump carried the state in 2016 by less than one percent over Democratic nominee Hilary Clinton. 

While Trump and his running mate J.D. Vance have enjoyed a lengthy head-start over Harris, the Democrat is being forced to adopt a fast-break offense to shore up her campaign strategy, which will soon include the naming of a vice-presidential running mate, who is expected to be vetted and chosen by the start of the Democratic convention in Chicago next week. Among the most prominent names on the short list are Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro. (Two other candidates -- Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper – removed themselves from contention on Monday.)

Kennedy said that the appointment of Shapiro could play a major role in securing the presidency for Harris – a ticket that would bring two former attorney generals together – largely on Shapiro’s ability to secure the southeastern region of his home turf by what Kennedy estimated could be as high as a 700,000-vote margin. 

The ‘Philadelphia machine’

“If there is one state that will determine who wins this election, it is going to be Pennsylvania,” Kennedy said. “It will be hard to see a candidate losing Pennsylvania and winning nationally. Shapiro is a very popular governor, not just with Democrats but also with Republicans and those who view themselves as Independents. 

“I think Shapiro would be incredibly strong in the voter-rich Philadelphia suburbs, and I think he would help Harris roll up huge margins in southeastern Pennsylvania and be able to stop some of the bleeding that Democrats have suffered in the southwestern part of the state and in some regions in Central Pennsylvania.”

Ihejirika agreed with Kennedy, saying that it will be crucial for the Harris campaign to tap “the Philadelphia machine” in the City of Philadelphia and in Montgomery, Delaware and Chester counties.  

“Harris can win this election easily if she takes into account the fact that Pennsylvania is the largest electoral college reach within all of the battleground states, and if she can win Pennsylvania, she will become the next president,” he said.

As it has in recent presidential elections, the 2024 presidential race will again shine a spotlight on Pennsylvania as a political archetype of battleground states – made up largely of Democrats and progressives in cities and their suburbs, and mostly Republicans and conservatives in the rural regions. While the state’s registered Republicans have in recent elections been influenced by entrenched belief systems or by Trump’s messaging during his 2016 and 2020 campaigns, Democrats have received poor grades when it comes to landing their platform in the middle counties of Pennsylvania. Nationally, the GOP’s party identification has increased more than 20 points over the last decade in these rural areas, leaving Democrats to draw much of their support from those who live in cities and suburbs.

Kennedy said that in order to attract Pennsylvania voters in rural parts of the state, Harris and her soon-to-be named running mate will need to create a “visceral connection” between them and their platform – a job that he said Biden was not able to do. Harris’ key task on her stops in Pennsylvania this fall, he said, will be to advertise herself as “an agent of change.”

“Their message has to be more than reeling off a laundry list of things that Biden [has done as President],” Kennedy said. “They must lay out a vision for what they want to do and connect emotionally with those voters. They are not going to peel off all those voters in Pennsylvania, but America is changing, and they need to make some attempts to cut into those margins among those white working-class voters.”

When classes begin this fall at Lincoln University, Ihejirika said he anticipates that student support for Harris will “be electric,” given that the vice president is a graduate of an historically Black university (Howard). Should Shapiro be added to the ticket, Ihejirika said it would reinvigorate the popularity the governor already enjoys at Lincoln. Last December, Shapiro visited the university for a ceremonial bill signing of House Bill 1461 that distributed a 21 percent increase to Lincoln University’s funding for the 2023-24 academic year, bumping its share of state money to more than $18 million – as well as raised the state’s allocations Penn State, Temple and Pitt.

During the ceremony, Shapiro thanked the “Freedom 14,” a group of 13 students and one graduate assistant who walked 66 miles from Lincoln to Harrisburg to advocate for and expedite the passage of the bill.

If the volatility of the last month is any indicator, the course of the 2024 presidential election will continue to be vulnerable to the unknown and impacted by the least expected – from simple gaffes and social media memes to controversial rhetoric and worldwide events – and all of it promises to determine the role that Chester County voters will play in deciding the next president. 

“There will be twists and turns along the way, but it all comes down to who this campaign will be about,” Kennedy said. “We’re in a very polarized environment. We’re not going to see wide shifts. Two and three percentages will make all the difference. Things are going to happen that we can’t even predict, and the election is three months away.”

Ihejirika said that he remains confident that Harris’ message presents a positive and futuristic vision for America.

“In spite of its difficulties, America will always choose someone who tells them about possibilities instead of impossibilities,” he said. “The divisive campaign slogans about moving back to the past are not where most Americans want to be, and you cannot win by fear.

[President Barack] Obama has said, ‘There is no Black America and white America. There is only one America,’ and that is the kind of argument that will win.”

To contact Staff Writer Richard L. Gaw, email [email protected].