Pennsylvania – where America’s future is decided

– Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania, is a phrase frequently used by American political analysts.

So far, the only televised debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris took place in Philadelphia, the state’s largest city. It is not accidental. They both know that Pennsylvania’s 19 electors are critically important.

The state, which has the historical nickname “Keystone State”, is in the center once again, as the largest of the so-called swing states, where both presidential candidates invest large resources and spend a lot of time in an attempt to win.

No Democrat has won without in 76 years

In 2016 Trump won the state with 44,292 votes and won the election, in 2020 it was the Democrats’ Joe Biden who won the state with 80,555 votes – and with it also the election.

Pennsylvania is far from the only important state, but it is a fact that the road to victory will be long for both candidates without it.

The Republicans’ Trump in particular has spent a lot of time in the state. It was during an election rally in Butler outside Pittsburgh that he was the victim of an assassination attempt on July 14.

In August, he told a public meeting in the city of Wilkes-Barre that “They say if you win Pennsylvania, you win the whole thing.” For the Democrats’ Harris, history speaks for itself: No Democratic candidate has won the presidential election outside of Pennsylvania since 1948.

The battle is in the suburbs

Pennsylvania is a diverse state. At each end are metropolitan regions with millions of inhabitants and critically important suburban voters. In the east is Philadelphia, one of the USA’s largest cities, the city where the USA was founded in 1776. At the western end is the old steel capital of Pittsburgh. In both cases, the cities themselves are largely strongly democratic, while the battle is in the suburbs.

Trump is not particularly popular in the suburbs, but aims to remind voters of the high inflation under Biden, writes the AP news agency.

– Many are now starting to say ‘if you ignore the personalities, we have to speed up the American economy’, says the Republicans’ state leader Lawrence Tabas.

At the same time, he is clearly most popular in rural areas and small towns in the middle of the state. Counties like Lancaster have well over 500,000 inhabitants and mostly vote heavily Republican.

Broad coalition

For Harris, the cornerstone is the broad coalition Biden assembled in 2020: young people, minority voters and women – she must get as many of these as possible to vote, especially in Philadelphia. Biden also won big in the suburbs around Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, as well as in industrial cities such as Scranton in northeastern Pennsylvania – the latter is Biden’s hometown. Former governor Ed Rendell believes Harris can widen his margin of victory in the suburbs even more.

– A democratic candidate can win by a much larger margin in those counties, says Rendell to AP.

The Democrats must also fight to defend the Senate mandate of Bob Casey Jr., which is critically important if the Democrats are to have any hope of holding on to their majority in the chamber. Casey has been a senator since 2006 and is the son of former Gov. Bob Casey Sr., but faces a strong challenger in Republican David McCormick this year.

Huge sums of money

In many ways, the state represents an older United States. It is located in the north-east, the state has cold winters and is somewhat whiter than the national average (75 per cent white, against 61.6 per cent nationally according to the 2020 census ).

Pennsylvania used to be a major industrial state, but since the 1970s this sector has declined – and many have moved south and west. At the same time, it has many features of the new United States: rapidly growing Latin American and Asian populations and an influential oil and gas sector.

Among other things, Harris has moved away from a previous position for banning the extraction of shale oil and gas, so-called fracking, which is a very important industry in Pennsylvania. At the same time, she fronts issues such as price caps on prescription medicine and cheaper daycare in order to win over the suburbs.

The status as the biggest swing state also means that the state’s residents are bombarded with advertising. As of 4 September, an overview from Financial Times that close to 180 million dollars – NOK 1.9 billion – had been spent on advertising from the two election campaigns.

And that with two months left of the election campaign.