Donald Trump is kicking into high gear for the homestretch of the election.
He’s facing a knockdown, drag-out brawl to make it back to the White House.
And Donald Trump has one major 2024 fight that will change everything.
Pennsylvania is almost essential for Donald Trump’s path to the White House
The biggest swing state in this year’s Presidential election is Pennsylvania with its 19 Electoral Votes.
Both Presidential campaigns see the state as crucial to their path to victory.
Vice President Kamala Harris has a slim lead in Pennsylvania of less than a point in the RealClearPolitics polling average of the state over former President Donald Trump.
North Star Opinion Research vice president Jon McHenry predicted that the winner of the state is headed to the White House.
“I think whoever wins Pennsylvania wins the presidency,” McHenry told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Yeah, there are other ways to put all the pieces together. But the math winds up being fairly hard for Trump if he doesn’t pull off Pennsylvania.”
McHenry thought that the state would come down to the wire.
“In the simplest terms, it’s the largest swing state,” McHenry explained. “To replace those 19 electoral votes, you’ve got to put together North Carolina and Nevada or Georgia and Wisconsin. There are other ways to replace it, but it’s a closely divided state. I’d be surprised if someone wins it by more than two points one way or the other.”
A battle between rural vs urban areas
Kamala is going to run up big margins in the heavily Democrat city of Philadelphia and hope that’s enough to overcome Trump’s dominance in the rural areas and small cities.
“You’ve got this huge Democratic city and county of Philadelphia, which is almost enough to offset all the rural and small-town voters perfectly,” McHenry explained. “Philly is sort of one center of gravity and then the rest of the state offsets it.”
The Trump campaign is hoping that inroads with black voters, especially black men, can help hold down Kamala’s margins in Philadelphia.
Democrat strategist Len Foxwell predicted that Pennsylvania would be won in the suburbs.
“I think this race is going to be won in the demographic middle,” Foxwell said. “It’s largely going to be won in the suburbs, and it’s largely going to be won on the issue of the economy.”
One of the biggest sectors of Pennsylvania’s economy is the energy industry.
The state is the second largest producer of natural gas in the country because of a boom powered by hydraulic fracking.
Kamala was a Green New Deal-supporting extremist who wanted to ban fracking until she started running for President in July.
She conveniently claims in an election year pivot that she no longer supports banning fracking.
“If Pennsylvania voters actually go and do their research, they’re going to find that Vice President Harris doesn’t support fracking,” McHenry said. “Yeah, she probably lied to the nation in that moment. Either she had a presidential race version of a deathbed confession, or she lied.”
Trump has been hammering Kamala for her support of banning fracking on the campaign trail.
Whoever wins Pennsylvania is going to have the inside track on winning the election.
