Kamala Harris is facing a really big problem in Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania could be the key swing state that Vice President Kamala Harris needs to win if she wants to defeat Donald Trump in November, but she is facing a big problem at the moment—the Republicans are registering more voters in the state. 

Axios reported that July saw Republicans register far more voters than Harris. The GOP saw 19,127 new voter registrations added to the rolls in the state of Pennsylvania while the Democrats only added 17,495. This is a major issue for the Vice President. 

In an election that is likely going to be decided by a slim number of voters across just a few key states, Pennsylvania isn’t a place where Harris and the Democrats can lose to Trump. But there are some hopeful signs for the Harris campaign. 

Axios noted that July was a month that saw an assassination attempt against the former president in Pennsylvania and also the withdrawal of President Joe Biden from the race, both of which could have affected the number of new voter registrations. 

Voter registrations also take time to process, so the numbers from July might not tell the full story and Democrats do still hold a majority of total registered voters with 3.9 million compared to the GOP’s 3.5 million in the state.

There are 1.3 million unaffiliated registered voters in Pennsylvania, which added 76,000 of this type of voter since January, and since Harris became the presumptive nominee for the Democrats, things have started improving for the party’s prospects in the state. 

Analysis of 26 polls in late August by The Hill’s Decision Desk HQ found that Harris had a slight edge over Trump in Pennsylvania with 48.4% of the vote share compared to Trump’s 47.4%. But was this lead an indicator of a future win?

Polling in Pennsylvania has been all over the political spectrum since the Vice President became the de-facto Democratic presidential nominee following Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the 2024 election race. But Harris has made inroads. 

“Before Harris became the nominee of the Democratic Party, a majority of polling coming out of the state showed that Trump was in the lead, ahead of President Joe Biden by between 2 and 7 points, according to FiveThirtyEight,” wrote Newsweek’s Martha McHardy.

“However, after Biden announced he was ending his re-election campaign and endorsed the vice president, Trump's lead in the polls largely vanished, with Harris overtaking him,” McHardy added. 

Analysis of 68 polls from The Hill’s Decision Desk HQ on a hypothetical matchup between Biden and Trump put the President behind Trump by 4.6%. Biden would take 43.8% of the vote compared to Trump’s 48.4%. 

Harris put Pennsylvania back into play for Democrats but not every poll has been favorable for the Vice President, she suffered a few setbacks in at least three different polls in late August according to Newsweek.

An Insider Advantage poll conducted between August 18th and 19th found Harris trailing Trump among 800 likely voters in the state by 46% to Trump’s 46.6%. While bad, that finding wasn’t nearly as worrying as earlier polls. 

According to earlier polling conducted by Cygnal and Emerson College on August 13th and August 15th, Trump led Harris by one point in the state. Still, the state appeared to be moving closer toward Harris and the Democrats at the end of August. 

As of August 20th, RealClearPolitics has given Trump a slight +0.2% edge over Harris in Pennsylvania, which means the race for the state is extremely close at the moment. 

The New York Times has given Trump a much larger lead over Harris in Pennsylvania, estimating that the former president is ahead of Harris as of August 20th by 2 points in the state. But why is Pennsylvania such an important state to win?

Pennsylvania is one of the seven key swing states that can provide a path to the White House for either Trump or Harris in 2024. However, it isn’t just another swing state, Pennsylvania is the largest of the battleground states. 

Pennsylvania holds 19 electoral votes and it is a state that’s been highly contested since Trump exploded onto the political scene, before which the state saw a series of Democratic wins.

In 2016, Trump bested Hillary Clinton in Pennsylvania and used the state to help propel him to the White House but he lost Pennsylvania to Biden in 2020 and the state made up a piece of the ‘Blue Wall’ that brought Biden to power according to U.S. News & World Report. 

“The Keystone State’s 19 electoral votes tie it with Illinois for the fifth-most among all states,” explained U.S. News & World Report Elliot Davis Jr., adding that ten out of the last twelve presidential election winners have won Pennsylvania.

Edward Luce of the Financial Times wrote in an August 18th article that the path to the White House currently runs through Pennsylvania since it is the largest of the country’s must-win swing states, but who will win it is still up in the air. 

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