We are just over a month away from the election, and several battleground states (Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina) appear to be breaking for Trump. Kamala's only hope for winning the election rests on her winning all three of the "blue wall" states. Unfortunately for Kamala Harris, it looks like she's losing momentum with Pennsylvania voters.
While her stance on fracking remains a significant liability in Pennsylvania, she doesn't have the same advantages in the state that Joe Biden had.
"Biden’s local ties and cultural roots helped lift him to victory in 2020 here in Lackawanna County, the population hub of increasingly red northeastern Pennsylvania," reports Charles F. McElwee at Politico. "In this most Catholic part of the swing state with the second-highest Catholic population, Biden ran ahead of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 pace, enabling his narrow, one percentage point statewide victory."
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"But now," McElwee continues, "as Democrats battle for the state with Kamala Harris as the nominee, their chances of winning in the region or performing well enough there to carry the state are looking considerably dicier. It’s not just the loss of Biden — an older, white, Catholic man with an affinity for the working class — from the top of the ticket that worries local Democrats. It’s the cultural dissonance with Harris, a Californian and woman of color who has spearheaded the party’s post-Dobbs abortion messaging. That profile makes her an awkward fit in a closely watched, economically hard-pressed working-class region that’s historically been a locus of anti-abortion activity."
For sure, the only issue that Kamala has a real strong advantage on with voters is abortion, and she's leaned heavily on that message. And that's a message that doesn't exactly resonate with Pennsylvania’s working-class, predominantly Republican towns.
Phil Condron, a lifelong Scranton resident and self-described "Joe Biden Democrat,", noted that Harris lacks the Catholic connection that Biden had with voters.
“We don’t have the Catholic connection with Harris. We don’t have the local connection with Harris,” he said. “So there’s really no reason to believe that she can approach the numbers that Biden was able to get when he ran last time.”
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Pollster Christopher Borick agreed, saying Biden related better to rural voters than Harris likely will.
Recent polls reflect this gap.
Look at how close this is: 5 of the last 7 polls in Pennsylvania have the race exactly tied. https://t.co/A8ga2HYbH9 pic.twitter.com/EaQhKSkem8
— Tom Bevan (@TomBevanRCP) September 26, 2024
Currently, Kamala has a mere 0.4-point lead in the RealClearPolitics average in Pennsylvania—nearly five points behind where Joe Biden was polling at this point in the campaign in 2020, and Trump had a late-breaking surge in the polls in the final week. Biden, despite his local connection to the state, barely won Pennsylvania by 80,000 votes.
You can bet Kamala is regretting not picking Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-Pa.) as her running mate.
