By Richard L. Gaw
Staff Writer

With each passing day, and each nervous flip through a smart phone for news about polling and trends and campaign speeches, there is clear and mounting evidence that the race to secure Pennsylvania’s vital 19 electoral college votes will be crucial to becoming the next President of the United States.

Heeding that alarm, Presidential candidates – Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump – have been canvassing Pennsylvania over the last few weeks as the race continues to tighten, both in the Commonwealth and nationally. According to the FiveThirtyEight polling average on Oct. 28, the race for president in Pennsylvania is “even” with Trump up 48 percent to Harris’ 47.6 percent. The most recent New York Times poll also categorized the race for the Commonwealth as a dead heat, with each candidate receiving 48 percent of the poll results. On the national scale – and with one week before the Nov. 5 election – Harris’s lead over Trump has narrowed to a very slim margin, while in other battleground states – Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina and Nevada – Trump and Harris are polling very tightly.

What has turned the race’s eyes to Pennsylvania in this election is due to it having more electoral votes than any other battleground state, and the fact that the Commonwealth is a bellwether, having voted for 10 of the last 12 White House winners. According to the election forecasting model used by the pollster Nate Silver, Pennsylvania will be far more likely to decide the election than any other battleground state, and that both candidates have a more than 85 percent chance of winning the election if they win Pennsylvania.

Over the past few months, in an effort to reel in voters, both candidates -- including their running mates Tim Walz and JD Vance -- have stumped in nearly 50 locations in Pennsylvania. To date, only Harris has made a stop in Chester County, when she spoke at a rally in Malvern on Oct. 21 with Republican and former Wyoming congresswoman Liz Cheney, who has been a vocal critic of Trump.

Harris’ campaign stopped in Philadelphia on Oct. 28, when rock legend Bruce Springsteen, singer John Legend and former U.S. President Barack Obama joined her at the Liacouras Center at Temple University. Harris was scheduled to make several stops in the Commonwealth on Oct. 29 alongside former President Bill Clinton in Johnstown, the University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg and McKeesport. Later that day, Harris will present her “closing argument” speech at the Ellipse in Washington, D.C., the same site where Trump hosted his “Stop the Steal” event on Jan. 6, 2021, that later led to thousands of his supporters storming the U.S. Capitol to protest the results of the 2020 Presidential election.

The Harris campaign will also be organizing various volunteer canvassing efforts in Chester County leading up the election.

Meanwhile, Trump has continued his campaign throughout Pennsylvania, hitting the more rural – and heavily Republican – regions of the state, which included a visit to see the Pittsburgh Steelers on Oct. 20. His recent tour of the Commonwealth – and his campaign as a whole -- has also been wrought with controversy. On Oct. 15, speaking at a rally in Oaks, Pa. – 20 miles from Philadelphia – Trump’s speech was cut short when two audience members required medical attention, and instead of continuing to field questions, he led the audience in a sing-along to “God Bless America,” “Ave Maria” and Rufus Wainright’s version of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.”

On Oct. 29, Trump returned to the Lehigh Valley to speak at the PPL Center in Allentown – which has a Puerto Rican population of more than 30,000 – just days after his rally at Madison Square Garden in New York City, an event that was condemned by both Republicans and Democrats for its derogatory comments about Puerto Rico. Speaking to an overflow crowd, comedian Tony Hinchcliffe characterized Puerto Rico as “a floating island of garbage.”

If there is an underlying, hot-button issue that could sway votes either away from or to Trump and Harris, it is fracking, a form of natural gas extraction technology created by advanced drilling techniques that tap into shale rock layers thousands of feet underground and then pump in millions of gallons of water, chemicals and sand to crack open fissures that release oil, natural gas or other fluids. 

While many oppose its potential harm to the environment, others see fracking as an economical goldmine for Pennsylvania that has created thousands of new jobs throughout the state and seen taxes from gas production rose to almost $180 million in 2023. Trump is in support of fracking while Harris has flip-flopped on the issue, proclaiming in 2019 that she supported a ban on it, but changing her view when she cast a tiebreaking vote in the U.S. Senate on legislation that expanded federal leases for fracking. 

With Pennsylvania’s 19 electoral votes at stake and less than one week from Election Day, the name-calling and finger pointing from one candidate to the other is expected to ratchet up even higher in the coming weekend, as will their TV ads, which combined have spent $500 million in Pennsylvania, the most of any state. Strategically, Harris’s path to become the first female President will depend on being able to attract voters in the state’s heavily Democratic regions that include Pittsburgh, Erie County and the northeast corridor that extends from the Lehigh Valley to Philadelphia and its suburbs, including Chester County, which narrowly voted in favor of President Joe Biden in 2020.

While he continues to campaign for reelection, Trump is continuing to resurrect many of the proposals that resounded with his base when he defeated Hillary Clinton in 2016 and during his 2020 loss to Joe Biden. He has vowed to restore several of the immigration policies he enacted as president, which include a massive deportation effort beginning early in his presidency. He has said that he favors lowering the corporate income tax rate to 15 percent from 21 percent; has promised to reverse many of the green energy initiatives of the Biden administration; favors abolishing the U.S. Department of Education; and if elected, plans to roll back Title IX protections for LGBTQ students and prosecute colleges that maintain affirmative action and DEI policies.

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