In the presidential election’s most important state, the race is a dead heat

In 2024, all roads lead to Pennsylvania, the largest of the seven swing states. In all probability, the winner of the state will win the election. It is the state that each candidate can least afford to lose. If Kamala Harris wins Pennsylvania as well as Michigan and Wisconsin, she will have 270 electoral votes, whatever happens in the contested southern and southwestern states. If Donald Trump wins Pennsylvania as well as Georgia and North Carolina, he will have 270 electoral votes, whatever happens in the southwest or the upper Midwest.

The race is close in every swing state. But in Pennsylvania, it is virtually tied. Of the 12 head-to-head polls conducted in the Keystone State since mid-September, six are tied, Trump leads in four, and Harris in the remaining two. 

The most recent poll to show the candidates in a dead heat in the Keystone State offers a representative snapshot of the race. Trump leads by double digits among men, and Harris among women. Both candidates’ parties are unified: Harris gets only seven percent of the Republican vote; Trump, only six percent of Democrats. Harris dominates by 12 points among whites with college degrees or more, Trump by 16 points among whites without bachelor’s degrees. Trump does lead by 18 points among Independents, however, and Harris’ potential gains in this group appear limited at best. On the other hand, she enjoys a healthy 13-point edge among voters under 35.

Not only is the race neck and neck; it seems frozen in place. In Pennsylvania, as elsewhere, the 2024 campaign resembles World War I, when two huge armies faced each other across a long front and struggled, at enormous cost, to gain a few yards of territory. The successful Democratic convention did not give Harris a boost. And neither, surprisingly, did the first (and probably only) presidential debate, of which the public saw her as the clear winner. 

The Trump difference

Donald Trump has changed the political valence of Pennsylvania in two key respects. In the four presidential elections from 2000 through 2012, Democrats outperformed their national vote margin by an average of two points in Pennsylvania. In the elections of 2016 and 2020, by contrast, they underperformed their national vote margin by an average of three points. In 2020, Joe Biden won the national popular vote by 4.4 points, but his margin in Pennsylvania was only 1.2 points. Four years earlier, Hillary Clinton prevailed in the national popular vote by 2.1 points while losing Pennsylvania by 0.7 points, a gap of 2.8 points. 

If this pattern continues in 2024 (which it may not, of course), Kamala Harris will need a lead of at least three points in the national popular vote to have a good chance of winning Pennsylvania. Her national lead now stands at slightly less than three points, consistent with the tie in the most recent Pennsylvania polls.

Harris’ path to victory in Pennsylvania faces a key hurdle: The Democratic advantage in voter registration has continued the erosion that began right after the Obama surge of 2008. Since 2020, the Democratic edge has been cut in half, from 686,000 to just 343,000, while Republican and Independent registration has continued to increase. As a share of the total electorate, Republican registration rose from 39.0% in 2020 to 40.2% this year while the Democratic share fell from 46.5% to 44.1%, reducing the Democratic edge from 7.5 points to 3.9 points.

Second, Trump’s candidacies have challenged traditional survey research by bringing previously disconnected working-class voters into presidential elections. Many of them do not show up in the ranks of “likely” voters, and some seem reluctant to respond to inquiries from organizations they neither know nor trust. On the eve of the 2020 election, the respected poll aggregator FiveThirtyEight gave Biden a national lead of 8.4 points and Trump just 43.4% of the vote. When all the votes had been counted, Trump received 46.9% of the vote (3.5 points higher than the RCP average), and Biden won by 4.4 points (4 points less than the preelection average). A landslide had turned into a squeaker, and a shift of just 44,000 votes in three swing states would have denied Biden an electoral college victory.

Much the same happened in Pennsylvania, where the preelection average gave Trump 45.6% of the vote. He ended up with 48.7%, and the Biden campaign had to wait for more than two days after the election to be sure of victory. The combination of the Trump era national vote/Pennsylvania vote gap and the persistent undercount of Trump’s supporters should make us cautious about the implications for polls for the outcome in Pennsylvania—unless Harris moves out to a substantial advantage in the closing weeks of the campaign.

Key issues in Pennsylvania

Among the swing states, the balance of key issues varies considerably. In Arizona, for example, an Emerson survey found that 31% of likely voters cite the economy as their most important concern, the lowest share of any swing state, while 23% choose immigration, the highest share of any swing state. In Pennsylvania, by contrast, 52% cite the economy, the highest share of any swing state, while immigration is ranked highest by only eight percent. Not all surveys provide the same list of options, so the raw numbers differ from one survey to the next. But all confirm the primacy of the economy/inflation among Pennsylvania voters.

The central concerns of the two major parties differ fundamentally; in some respects, they are mirror images of each other. Here’s one survey’s breakdown by party in Pennsylvania.

Other polls confirm the remarkable finding that Pennsylvania’s Democratic electorate cares more about abortion than any other issue. Less surprisingly, it is the top issue for many more women than men. According to one survey, 23% of women rank it first, compared to nine percent of men; another survey finds a 21% to four percent gender gap. And non-white women are about twice as likely as white women to give it top billing. When Harris campaigns on abortion, therefore, she is speaking primarily to women who form the base of the Democratic Party. There is as yet no evidence that this issue is moving substantial numbers of moderate Republican women in the Pennsylvania suburbs to support her candidacy, although it may end up doing so.

Despite these partisan differences, there is no ambiguity about the top issue for the state’s electorate as a whole: It is the economy, with a focus on inflation. Like most of the country, the state has been on an economic roller-coaster during the past two administrations. Corrected for inflation, household incomes rose sharply during the first three years of the Trump administration, stagnated during his last year and Biden’s first, fell sharply in 2022 as inflation surged, and recovered somewhat in 2023 as inflation subsided and the labor market tightened.

Although the rate of inflation has fallen to near-normal levels, it has left a residue of high prices in Pennsylvania as in the rest of the country. When I visited Northampton County, the state’s most reliable bellwether¹, everyone I talked to spontaneously raised the cost of housing as a principal concern. The editor of the local newspaper told me that the monthly rent on two-bedroom apartments had soared to $1,800 to $2,000, a hefty amount for young families in an area whose household incomes are below the national median. The head of the Lehigh Valley Chamber of Commerce estimated that the gap between housing demand and supply had reached 8,000 units and that homes are receiving multiple bids the day they come into the market. He added, poignantly, “How you do expect young people to say, ‘This is my country,’ if they can’t own a piece of it?”

Trump appears to be making headway with Pennsylvania’s inflation/economy voters. The most recent Susquehanna survey found that among the respondents who rated this their top issue, the former president was leading Vice President Harris by 57-34, up from 50-38 in late July. The latest Washington Post poll gave Trump a healthy lead among these voters as well as those concerned about immigration and crime. Harris enjoys a huge advantage on abortion and a smaller one on health care. When it comes to advancing the interests of the middle class and preserving democracy, the two candidates are tied. 

The atmospherics of the election

When I visited Northampton County shortly before Joe Biden abandoned his quest for a second term, local Democrats were in a somber mood. While several people I interviewed opined that Joe Biden could eke out a victory in Pennsylvania, they were hardly brimming with confidence. A local Democratic official told me that if it rained on Election Day, a fair number of party faithful disappointed by Biden’s performance as president might stay home.

What a difference a new candidate makes. In a recent interview, Muhlenberg College’s Chris Borick told me that the level of activity on the ground and the airwaves is now “off the charts,” beyond anything he had seen before. It is impossible to turn on the television without seeing spots for both candidates on every program. Trump’s media campaign is focused on inflation and border security. The tone is negative, and the theme is fear. The Harris campaign is taking the offensive on abortion while trying to blunt Trump’s advantage on the economy by emphasizing her commitment to battle high prices.

Not surprisingly, both tickets have made multiple trips to Pennsylvania, and more are planned in the closing weeks of the campaign. Harris recently unveiled her economic plan in Pittsburgh; Trump countered with an event in Erie County, one of only two that he carried in 2016 but lost in 2020. Multiple reports indicate that economic gains made during the past year have not impressed the county’s voters, even though funds from the legislation enacted during the administration’s first two years have flowed to the area.²

In contrast, Northampton County is doing reasonably well. Unlike Erie, it has gained population in recent decades, and it has managed to replace its industrial-era economic base (Bethlehem Streel was situated in one of the county’s principal cities) with warehousing and services. Few storefronts are unrented, and Easton, the county seat, supports a large number of upscale restaurants. Long-time residents told me that thousands of people from New York and New Jersey have moved to Easton over the past decade, a trend that accelerated during the pandemic. Many of these newcomers commute to New York City, allowing them to combine Big Apple salaries with Pennsylvania’s lower cost of living.

Erie and Northampton represent, in microcosm, the two states of Pennsylvania. They moved in tandem from Obama in 2012 to Trump in 2016 to Biden in 2020. In a sign of just how competitive the state is this year, it would not be surprising to see them split between Trump and Harris. And because the state’s election laws forbid counting mail-in ballots until the last poll closes on election night, the country may wait days to find out which candidate carried the state that may well determine the outcome of the presidential election.