Anika Begay
By Nathan Layne and Joseph Ax
WILKES-BARRE, Pennsylvania (Reuters) – Republican Donald Trump said on Saturday he believes Democrat Kamala Harris will be easier to beat than President Joe Biden, even though some polls had given her a clear lead in the Nov. 5 presidential race.
Trump, the former president, made the remarks at a rally in Wilkes-Barre, in northeastern Pennsylvania, a state that looms over the campaign. Vice President Harris will lead a bus tour of western Pennsylvania starting in Pittsburgh on Sunday, before the Democratic National Convention begins Monday in Chicago.
“I think she’s going to be easier to beat than him,” Trump said, calling her “radical” and “lunatic.”
Trump has sought to paint Harris as far left on a number of policies. At the rally, he highlighted her previous call for a ban on fracking, an important industry for the state. Harris’s campaign recently indicated she would not support a ban.
He continued to attack Harris on personal terms, although some political analysts argue that such comments could damage Trump among moderate voters.
“Did you hear her laugh? That’s the laugh of a crazy person,” Trump said.
Pennsylvania was one of three Rust Belt states, along with Wisconsin and Michigan, that helped Trump sweep the state in 2016. Biden, who grew up in Scranton, Pennsylvania, carried the trio back to the Democrats in 2020.
With 19 electoral votes out of the 270 needed to secure the White House, compared to Michigan’s 15 and Wisconsin’s 10, Pennsylvania could represent the highest stakes in this year’s election and potentially tip the scales in favor of either candidate.
Harris’s entry into the race after Biden ended his reelection bid last month has upended the race, erasing the lead Trump had built during the final weeks of Biden’s faltering campaign. Harris is leading Trump by more than two percentage points in Pennsylvania, according to the polling website FiveThirtyEight.
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Trump won Pennsylvania in 2016 by about 44,000 votes, a margin of less than one percentage point, while Biden prevailed by just over 80,000 votes in 2020, a margin of 1.2%.
Both campaigns have made the state a top priority, flooding the airwaves with ads. Of the more than $110 million spent on ads in seven key states since Biden dropped out in late July, about $42 million has been spent in Pennsylvania, more than double that of any other state, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday, citing data from the tracking site AdImpact.
According to AdImpact, Democratic and Republican groups have already reserved $114 million in advertising space in Pennsylvania from late August until the election, more than double the $55 million reserved in Arizona, the second-highest amount.
Harris’s campaign said Saturday that it plans to spend at least $370 million on digital and television ads across the country between Labor Day, Sept. 2, and Election Day.
Among the swing states, considered crucial to winning the elections, there are also Arizona, North Carolina, Nevada and Georgia.
New polls released Saturday by The New York Times found Harris leading Trump among likely voters in Arizona, 50 percent to 45 percent, and North Carolina, 49 percent to 47 percent, and that the former president’s lead had narrowed in Nevada, 47 percent to 49 percent, and Georgia, 46 percent to 50 percent. A Trump campaign pollster said the poll results underestimated support for the Republican nominee.
Trump and Harris have each visited Pennsylvania more than a half-dozen times this year. Trump was wounded in an assassination attempt at his rally near Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13.
Trump will deliver a speech on the economy at a campaign event in York, Pennsylvania, on Monday. His running mate, U.S. Sen. J.D. (NASDAQ:) Vance, will hold an event in Philadelphia that day.
Trump’s trip to Wilkes-Barre in Luzerne County on Saturday is aimed at solidifying support among white, non-college-educated voters who carried him to victory in 2016. The blue-collar county voted Democratic for decades before swinging heavily toward Trump in 2016, mirroring similar regions across the country.
Trump won Luzerne in 2020 by 14.4 percentage points, a smaller margin than his 19.4-point victory in 2016. With Biden out of the running, Trump likely sees room for gains in this part of the state, said Chris Borick, a political science professor at Muhlenberg College.
“This is the kind of place where Trump has a lot of strengths,” Borick said, referring to the state’s northeast region. “Marginal gains in a region like this could certainly have some impact on his ability to take back Pennsylvania.”
Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, will make several stops in Allegheny and Beaver counties on Sunday, the campaign said. The tour is the first time Harris, Walz and their spouses have campaigned together since their first rally as presidential candidates in Philadelphia earlier this month.
Pennsylvania was at the heart of Biden’s 2020 victory strategy in the Rust Belt states: narrowing Trump’s margins among white, working-class voters while building majorities among suburban voters and driving higher turnout in urban areas with large Black populations.
Harris’s campaign is pursuing a similar “win big, lose small” strategy, aiming for big margins in the cities and suburbs of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh while limiting losses in smaller counties like Beaver County, where Trump won 58% of the vote in 2020.
