Kamala Harris is closing the gap on Trump in Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania will be one of the most important states to win in November and Kamala Harris may be poised to capture the key state from Donald Trump, according to polling data.

Analysis of 26 polls by The Hill’s Decision Desk HQ has found Harris has a slight edge over Trump in Pennsylvania with 48.4% of the vote share compared to Trump’s 47.4%. But is 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 has put Pennsylvania back into play for Democrats but not every poll has been favorable for the Vice President, she suffered setbacks in at least three different polls recently according to Newsweek.

A recent 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 appears to be moving closer toward Harris and the Democrats. 

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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