(NewsNation) — With polls tied in Pennsylvania, the Harris and Trump campaigns are working hard to win the state.
Prior to Tuesday night’s debate in Philadelphia, Vice President Kamala Harris spent four days in Pittsburgh preparing while also taking the opportunity to step out and meet with voters. She’ll be back in Pennsylvania on Friday where she’ll hold a rally in Wilkes-Barre.
Former President Donald Trump was in Harrisburg last week for a Fox town hall.
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Behind the scenes, much of the painstaking work is being done to reach out to voters. It’s called a ground game and there are some key similarities and differences in the strategies being employed by the Harris and Trump campaigns.
Similarities
Both campaigns tell NewsNation that volunteers are knocking on doors, phone banking, putting together lawn signs and writing postcards and letters. This work is designed to add a personal touch as they try to convince friends, neighbors, and even strangers to vote for their candidate.
The two campaigns are pushing their respective economic plans, although the plans themselves diverge substantially.
Kush Desai, Pennsylvania communications director for Team Trump says part of their message is asking voters, “Are you really better off than you were four years ago? Are prices lower or higher for you?” The Trump campaign is also calling for a corporate tax cut.
The Harris campaign points to the middle-class and small-business tax cuts and credits she wants to enact. At a campaign press conference in Pittsburgh, small business owner Brett Gilliam said Harris’s plan to give new businesses a $50,000 tax break “would have been life-changing for me when I was starting out.”
The Harris campaign is also calling out Trump’s tariff plan that some economists say could cost an American family up to $3900 per year.
Volunteers for both campaigns told NewsNation they’re excited and that the response from voters has been positive.
Differences
The main difference in the campaign’s strategies lies in the voters that they’re targeting.
The Harris campaign has two main goals. The first is to make sure her supporters get out and vote, especially in urban areas where she’s likely to do well. The second is to lose by less in rural areas where Trump tends to run up the margins.
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“What we have seen in the past is that Republicans tend to do better with rural areas and we’re aware of that. But that doesn’t mean that everybody in a rural area is voting republican. And if we can get just a few more democrats out, a few more folks out to just sort of close those margins a little bit, it means a lot statewide,” said Erin Gabriel, Chair of the Beaver County Democrats. Beaver is a key swing county.
The Harris campaign has just hired a rural engagement director to make additional inroads in these communities.
Vice presidential nominee and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz just completed a campaign swing in Pennsylvania which included stops in Lancaster and Erie, both of which are swing counties with rural populations. At his rally in Erie, Walz talked about his rural Nebraska upbringing and highlighted the similarities between Minnesota and Pennsylvania.
Trump effectively wants to do the opposite. He needs more of his rural voters to come out to vote and he wants to lose by less in urban areas. According to Desai, they’re focused on winning over voters who don’t typically vote, also known as low-propensity voters.
David Gehring, a volunteer for the Trump campaign, explained their strategy saying, “while we don’t normally win Allegheny county, we do have the most registered republicans in the state in Allegheny county so this is actually one of the most important counties in the country because Pennsylvania is such a big swing state…what we do is we come in and we try and turn out the low-propensity voters on the Republican side.”
Another area where the two campaigns diverge a bit is infrastructure. The Trump campaign says they have over 24 offices with staff around the state, including in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.
The Harris campaign says they had almost that number back in May. Now, they say they have 50 offices and over 350 staff members. Sixteen of those offices are in primarily rural counties that Trump won back in 2020.
There are just 57 days left until we find out if Harris’s long-term investment pays off or if Trump is able to overcome an infrastructure deficit to eke out a win.
