Harris and Trump duel in key states

Philadelphia will be at the center of the American political world on August 6. Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris will introduce her running mate in front of 10,000 people at a college basketball arena Tuesday afternoon. What her campaign team expects to be a highly visual, enthusiastic, televised event will mark the starting point of an intense five-day tour of the seven key swing states, those that will really count in the November elections. At the same time, at another sports arena in the city’s south side, Republican vice-presidential candidate J. D. Vance will promote his political platform at a parallel rally.

That Harris has chosen Philadelphia to launch her tour, and to present her vice-presidential pick, and that Vance will be there on the same day is, of course, no coincidence. If election campaigns can be compared to wars, what is being fought in Pennsylvania would be the battle of Stalingrad in World War II: the most pivotal of the entire conflict, the most closely fought, the one that neither side can afford to lose. The one that will end up tilting the outcome to one side or the other.

This is so because of the particularity of the U.S. electoral system, in which it is not necessarily the candidate who gains the most votes who wins, but the one who manages to obtain 270 votes in the electoral college. In this institution, each state has a certain number of votes according to its size and population. Those votes are awarded as a block (with exceptions in Maine and one district in Nebraska) to the candidate who wins there.

Most states are traditionally aligned with one party or the other. Broadly speaking, the coasts, the northern industrial belt, Colorado and New Mexico vote Democratic; the Midwest and the South lean Republican. But neither bloc is enough to add up to 270 electoral votes. Therefore, the real deciders are the handful of swing states, which in this election year are Wisconsin, Michigan, Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania, the must-win state

Of all of these Pennsylvania, the most populous, offers the biggest reward in votes: 19. An essential state that both Harris and her Republican rival, Donald Trump, need to win at all costs to secure the keys to the White House.

The Democratic candidate has thrown all of her campaign weight at Pennsylvania, a state that Joe Biden — originally from there and who boasts of his working-class roots in Scranton, an industrial town — won in 2020 by 80,000 votes, and which four years earlier had leaned towards Trump. Harris has already visited Pennsylvania several times. Democrats have invested in advertising and in mobilizing volunteers.

Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro has emerged as an early favorite to run alongside Harris, due his communication skills, his telegenics, his long record of accomplishments and a reputation as a moderate that balances out the progressive aura of the former California senator. And also because of his immense popularity in Pennsylvania, which stands at 61% according to some polls with 42% of Republican voters giving him their approval.

The former state attorney general, strategists believe, could scratch up a not necessarily huge, but significant, number of votes in his home state that would tip Pennsylvania to the Democratic side: and with Pennsylvania, the electoral college.

But while Pennsylvania is the make-or-break state of the electoral contest, the two parties also need to take advantage of other states in play. Hence Harris and her running mate’s whistlestop tour to Eau Claire (Wisconsin), Detroit (Michigan), Durham (North Carolina), Savannah (Georgia), Phoenix (Arizona) and Las Vegas, (Nevada). Vance will follow a similar route on the same days. Until Biden withdrew from the presidential race two weeks ago, Trump was ahead in the polls in all those states. In some, like Nevada, he held a substantial lead.

A fortnight after Harris took the baton from Biden, the tables appear to be turning. The vice-president has closed the gap on her Republican rival in the polls, which now show a technical tie. Some have Harris ahead in certain key states. The most recent one, published by the CBS television network Sunday, forecasts a voting intention of 50% to the Democratic candidate, compared to 49% for Trump.

According to this analysis, the former president is ahead of his rival in North Carolina, Georgia, and Wisconsin; both are equal in Arizona, Michigan, and Pennsylvania; Harris is ahead in Nevada.

These are numbers that Harris’ campaign has welcomed with enthusiasm. Two weeks ago, in the same poll, Biden was six percentage points behind Trump. The former president was winning in every swing state and even gaining ground in traditionally Democratic territories.

The optimism generated by the Democratic surge has handed Harris additional advantages: the donations faucet has been turned back on and pulled in over $300 million last month, giving the Democratic coffers a $60 million advantage in cash on hand. An advantage they plan to employ in investing in ads in swing states, among other things. Hundreds of thousands of volunteers have also signed up for the campaign: a total of 370,000 new pairs of hands, including 15,500 in Georgia, 21,000 in Arizona, and 10,500 in North Carolina.

“In Nevada, Team Harris has 13 offices, while Trump has just one,” the director of the Democratic campaign in the swing states, Dan Kanninen, noted in a memo. “In Pennsylvania, we have 36 coordinated offices while Trump has just three. In Georgia, we have 24 offices while the Trump team didn’t open their first until June.”

In Georgia alone — a state that went Biden’s way in 2020 by just 12,000 votes, based on a mass mobilization of its large Black community, a very young population, and arrivals from other states to take advantage of one of the most dynamic economies in the entire country — Harris’ candidacy has put 100,000 votes in play from people who until now leaned towards the Republicans or did not plan to vote at all, according to Axios. The vice president and Trump both visited Atlanta and held rallies in the same place just four days apart last week.

In Arizona, the Democrat has picked up a number of endorsements from mayors in border towns, including Republican-held Mesa, something that bolsters her campaign in one of the areas in which the Republicans have attacked her most insistently: immigration policy.

Of the seven swing states, perhaps the most uphill battle for the Democrats is North Carolina, which has only swung to their side twice so far this century. But, like Georgia, its demographics are changing, due to an influx of younger people from other states. Running as the Republican candidate for governor is the current number two, the very conservative Mark Robinson, which may also open up opportunities for Harris’ campaign according to her strategists.

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