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2 weeks ago
To celebrate his anniversary this year, Phil Haegele joined the back of a long line at a polling station with his wife on a warm autumn afternoon and waited to cast his ballot for Donald Trump.
It was the first time that Haegele, a 47-year-old plumber, cast an early ballot. But he had heard on the radio that a judge had extended early voting in Bucks county, a battleground in south-eastern Pennsylvania where he lives. He proceeded to get bombarded with “probably 50 text messages” encouraging him to come out and vote, so he did.
“A lot of the news agencies that we follow, they were saying they were trying to get as many Trump supporters to vote early, to try and ward of as much fraud as they could,” he said.
Haegele’s decision to spend his anniversary waiting to vote underscored the stakes of every vote in Pennsylvania, which may be the most prized of the seven swing states this fall.
Pennsylvania has 19 electoral votes – the most of any swing state – and the pathway to getting 270 electoral votes winning the election is more complicated for the candidate who does not win it. Both Trump and Kamala Harris have crisscrossed the state during the final week of campaigning and on Monday, held dueling rallies about an hour apart in the Lehigh valley, one of the most competitive parts of the state. Harris dedicated the entirety of the final day of the campaign to Pennsylvania, making four stops in the state.
“I’m quite terrified,” said Sonny Berenson, 20, a student at Muhlenberg college who attended Harris’s rally there on Monday. “This is probably the most contentious election in American history and we’re living in a state that can decide it. So I feel very powerful and very scared, but obviously I hope and pray Kamala wins.”
Sitting on the bleachers a few rows away Danielle Shackelford, 68, a worker for the Pennsylvania lottery from Allentown, said she was optimistic Harris would win. She said abortion was a top issue for her and that there were many women who were silently supporting Harris over the issue.
“They are fighting with everything inside of them to fight against what has been put out there,” she said. “What Trump has done, he has unleashed the wrath of women.”
Both campaigns are fighting for votes from Pennsylvania’s sizable Latino population. There are more than 500,000 Latino voters in the state and the Trump campaign spent the final week trying to shore up that support after a comedian called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage” at a rally.
Voters at one of his rallies in Allentown didn’t really think the joke would hurt his chances in the state. Some said that they thought the joke was in poor taste, but it wouldn’t affect how people were going to make up their mind.
A staggering $1.2bn has been spent on political advertising in the state, according to NPR, the most out of any swing state. It’s the first time that spending in a single US state has surpassed $1bn in a cycle, the outlet reported. The interstates in the state are dotted with billboards for both candidates. Lawn signs and billboards are nearly evenly split, with houses next to each other and across the street supporting different candidates. Despite all that spending, polls show the race is dead even.
There has also been intense legal wrangling over whether mail-in votes should be rejected over technicalities. The Pennsylvania supreme court ruled in late October that the state did not have to accept mail-in ballots that were undated. Then the US supreme court ruled on Friday that those who were going to have their mail-in vote rejected because they forgot to put it in a secrecy sleeve could cast a provisional ballot on election day.
Trump has used alarming rhetoric in the final week of the campaign to solidify what has already been clear for months: he will refuse to accept a loss in Pennsylvania or other states he may lose. He told supporters in Lilitz on Sunday that he “shouldn’t have left” the White House.
He has also distorted an investigation into potentially fraudulent voter registration applications in Lancaster county to falsely suggest there are false votes being cast. While officials there are investigating suspicious registration forms, they have not said any illegal votes have been cast.
Read more of the Guardian’s 2024 US election coverage
“I think it’s going to be a blowout,” Trump said. “I know they’re going to cheat again.” There was no evidence of fraud in Pennsylvania in 2020.
After spending years attacking early voting and mail-in voting, Republicans have encouraged supporters to vote early. It’s a message that resonated with voters like Rene Diaz, Jr, a 36-year-old machinist who waited around 45 minutes to vote in Bucks county on Halloween.
“In 2020 you had certain polling places that had water mains supposedly break and all this stuff happened and people weren’t able to vote,” he said. A water main broke at the State Farm Arena in Atlanta while ballots were being counted in 2020; it did not prevent anyone from voting.
Diaz said his top issues this election were the economy, foreign policy and the border.
“We are drowning in so much debt that we shouldn’t be helping fight two wars and sending countries to fight two wars and help fund other programs,” he said. “I have children and it’s important that my children get to grow up with the life that I have.”
“They’re choosing not to help our own country,” said his wife Amanda Diaz, 31, who stood in line dressed in a halloween costume.
Elizabeth Slaby, an 81-year-old from Allentown, arrived at Harris’s rally in Allentown at 6.00am on Monday with her son and grandson. She said that she had been a Republican for more than 50 years but changed her registration five days after January 6.
Joe Biden won Pennsylvania by just over 88,000 votes in 2020, flipping the state back from Trump. His victory offers a roadmap of what Harris will need to do to carry the state – get monster turnout in Philadelphia’s Democratic leaning suburbs, cut into Trump’s margins in Republican areas and win back working class voters in the state’s north-east.
That’s why the battle for Pennsylvania is being fought in places like Luzerne county, a former industrial hub in the state’s northeast. Barack Obama carried the county in 2012 by nearly five points; Trump won it in 2016 by nearly 20 points. Four years later, Biden was able to do slightly better there, improving on Clinton’s performance by six points. Democrats are unlikely to flip the county, but hope to cut further into Trump’s margin of victory.
Romilda Crocamo, the county manager, said she’s concerned about violence on election day. During the early voting period, she had to call a sheriff to the election office to break up a fight. One of the election employees was called a racial slur, and another was spit on. The county has installed new barricades at the election office and all other government employees will be working elsewhere on election day.
On the Sunday before the election, a group of about a dozen canvassers gathered in a small office of Action Together Northeast Pennsylvania in downtown Wilkes-Barre, the county seat, to knock on doors. Jessica Brittain, the group’s organizing and communications director went over a script canvassers could use on the doors. “We know that abortion is one of the biggest motivators in all of the races we’ve worked on this year,” she said.
One of the people at the canvas was Gary Williams, a 73-year-old retired banker who lives just outside the city. That morning, he said, his Harris-Walz lawn sign had been stolen for the second time. He said he had already put out a replacement.
“I want a president who’s obviously telling the truth and makes decisions based on facts,” he said.
Later Sunday afternoon, Jimmy Conroy, a 27-year-old, who leads Action Together’s canvassing, darted between homes on the south side of Wilkes-Barre. Many of the doors were already stuffed with flyers for different candidates. The day before, Conroy said someone called the police on him for canvassing (the officers went away without incident).
Conroy has spent years knocking on doors in Pennsylvania and one of the things that has stood out to him the most this election is the age gap in people supporting Trump and Harris.
Younger people, he said, are “either undecided or leaning towards Trump”.
At Harris’s rally in Allentown on Monday, Carmen Bell, 68, said she was choosing to be optimistic about the results.
“I can’t allow myself to lean into the negative because that is so beyond the pale. I feel like she’s gonna get it done and it’s not gonna be as close as it looks,” she said.
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