What Vance’s plan to 'go all-in on PA' reveals about Trump’s campaign: analysis

23 August 2024

After Vice President Kamala Harris gave her acceptance speech at the 2024 Democratic National Convention, CNN interviewed eight undecided voters in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Six of them, following the speech, said they had decided to vote for Harris; another said he decided to vote for Trump, and one voter said they weren't sold on either candidate.

The fact that CNN spoke to those voters in Allentown was no coincidence: Pennsylvania is the ultimate swing state, and the Harris and Trump campaigns both view it as a state that could make or break them.

According to NOTUS, Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) are planning to "go all in on Pennsylvania."

NOTUS journalists Katherine Swartz and Reese Gorman report that Trump and Vance "are in the middle of an all-out blitz in Pennsylvania, putting more emphasis on campaigning in the commonwealth than perhaps any other state."

"While Trump is looking to eat into Kamala Harris’ numbers all over the state," Swartz and Gorman explain, "his campaign's visits have predominantly centered on the rural and working-class stretches of Pennsylvania he won in 2016 and 2020. Just this week, Trump visited York, in the central part of the state, and Wilkes-Barre, in the northeast. And GOP sources told NOTUS to expect much more campaigning in those sorts of areas, from both Trump and particularly Vance."

Conservative Craig Snyder, who served as chief of staff to the late Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pennsylvania) and now leads Haley Voters for Harris — a group of anti-Trump Republicans who supported former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley in the 2024 GOP presidential primary but are now backing Harris — noted that Pennsylvania becomes especially vital for Trump if Harris wins enough Sun Belt states.

Snyder told NOTUS, "Now that we're in the real race that we're actually in, I think Pennsylvania may have, in fact, become indispensable for Trump in a way that it just wasn't before."

A Trump campaign official interviewed by NOTUS pointed out that "what kind of matters in eastern Pennsylvania is kind of different than what matters in western Pennsylvania."

Joe Lorenzini at the University of Chicago Law School has been tweeting about Trump's Pennsylvania strategy, which he described as aiming for victory via "the narrowest of margins possible."

Lorenzini alluded to how Democratic went in 2022, when Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro enjoyed a double-digit landslide victory over far-right MAGA Republican Doug Mastriano.

"They're acting very short sighted, especially considering how blue PA was during the midterms," Lorenzini commented.

Read the full NOTUS article at this link.

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