Harris winning Pennsylvania may depend on visiting this one critical county: expert

04 September 2024

If Vice President Kamala Harris hopes to win the November election, her path to 270 Electoral College votes will likely go through Pennsylvania. And a victory in the Keystone State could hinge on whether she campaigns in one pivotal county the battleground state.

In a recent interview with Newsweek, Robert Speel — an associate professor of political science at Penn State University — opined that Harris needs to avoid the pitfalls that cost former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton the Keystone State in 2016. One of those big mistakes was not visiting Erie County, in the far northwestern corner of the state. Speel said Harris can't afford to just spend her time in Pennsylvania by campaigning in its largest cities.

"While the Philadelphia and Pittsburgh metro areas are the two largest in the state by far, they only contain about half of the state's population. In 2016, Clinton herself campaigned almost exclusively in the two big metro areas and ignored much of the rest of the state, for example never visiting Erie County where I live," Speel said. "Trump did visit Erie and many of Pennsylvania's smaller cities during the 2016 campaign, and Biden visited Erie in 2020 before winning the county."

As Speel pointed out, Biden flipped Erie County from red to blue in 2020, barely capturing the county bridging Pennsylvania with Ohio and New York by less than 2,000 total ballots. Clinton lost Erie County by roughly 3,000 votes in 2016. And while Biden carried his home state of Pennsylvania by approximately 80,000 votes, his margin of victory was likely buffeted by the time he spent in Erie County, as his vote totals were also slightly higher than Clinton's in neighboring Crawford and Warren Counties.

So far, Harris has campaigned with President Joe Biden in Philadelphia, and has also visited Pittsburgh, which is the seat of Allegheny County. While she has not yet stopped in Erie, Trump hasn't either. But the former president has visited smaller Pennsylvania towns like Butler, Johnstown, Wilkes-Barre and York along with Philadelphia.

Pennsylvania — which has voted for the eventual winner of the Electoral College in 10 of the past 12 election cycles — has emerged as one of the top prizes of the 2024 contest. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that both the Harris and Trump campaigns have focused on winning both Georgia and Pennsylvania as key to their most direct path to 270 electoral votes.

For Trump, winning Georgia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania would mean he could lose every other battleground state and still emerge victorious in November. Harris, on the other hand, has found that winning Georgia and Pennsylvania will keep the White House in Democratic hands provided she wins just one of any of the other battleground states like Arizona, Michigan, North Carolina and Wisconsin (and assuming Nebraska's 2nd Congressional District stays blue)

Speel said Harris will need to tailor one specific policy pitch in one direction or the other depending on how she wants to approach Pennsylvania. He noted that in her recent CNN interview, Harris made it clear she would not ban fracking. According to Speel, this may play well in more rural parts of the Keystone State, though the position may cost her support in Democratic strongholds like Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.

"[F]racking is important to the economies of parts of the southwest and north central parts of the state, but many people in the Philadelphia area and other parts of the state probably oppose fracking," he said.

The winner of Pennsylvania's 19 electoral votes may not be known on the night of November 5, due to the state having a law in place preventing the counting of mail-in ballots prior to Election Day (also known as "pre-canvassing.") The battleground state of Wisconsin — which has 10 electoral votes — also prevents pre-canvassing, meaning that the outcome of the presidential election could be a mystery for several days after ballots are cast.

Click here to read Newsweek's report in full.

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