Trump, Harris to vie for Pennsylvania votes

Wilkes-Barre (Reuters): Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Kamala Harris will hold dueling campaign events this weekend in Pennsylvania, the political battleground that may be the most critical state in the Nov. 5 presidential election.

Trump, the former president, will hold a Saturday rally in Wilkes-Barre in the northeastern section of the state. Vice President Harris will conduct a bus tour of western Pennsylvania starting in Pittsburgh on Sunday, ahead of the Democratic National Convention kickoff on Monday in Chicago.

Pennsylvania was one of three Rust Belt states, along with Wisconsin and Michigan, that helped power Trump's upset victory in 2016. President Joe Biden, who grew up in Scranton, Pennsylvania, flipped the trio back to Democrats in 2020.

The three states are true bellwethers - the only U.S. states to have voted for the eventual winner of the presidential race in every cycle since 2008.

With 19 electoral votes out of the 270 needed to secure the White House, compared with 15 in Michigan and 10 in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania may be the biggest prize in November's election.

A statistical model created by Nate Silver, the election forecaster, estimates that Pennsylvania is more than twice as likely as any other to be the "tipping point" state - the one whose electoral votes push either Harris or Trump over the top.

Harris' entry into the race after Biden ended his reelection bid last month has upended the contest, erasing the lead Trump had built during the final weeks of Biden's shaky campaign. Harris is leading Trump by more than two percentage points in Pennsylvania, according to the poll tracking website FiveThirtyEight.

Trump won Pennsylvania in 2016 by around 44,000 votes, a margin of less than one percentage point, while Biden prevailed by just over 80,000 votes, a 1.2% margin.

Both campaigns have made the state a top priority, including blanketing the airwaves with advertisements. Of the more than $110 million spent on advertising in seven swing states since Biden dropped out in late July, roughly $42 million was spent in Pennsylvania, more than twice any other state, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday, citing data from the tracking site AdImpact.