The Democratic and Republican presidential candidates are campaigning in battleground Pennsylvania this weekend.
Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are holding campaign events in the key US state of Pennsylvania this weekend, as competition between the United States presidential candidates intensifies ahead of the November election.
Trump will hold a rally in the small town of Wilkes-Barre on Saturday, while Harris will make several stops during a bus tour around the city of Pittsburgh on Sunday.
Attention is focused on Pennsylvania — one of several battleground states expected to be crucial in deciding the election — as recent polling shows a tight contest between the Republican and Democratic candidates in key parts of the country.
A New York Times/Siena College poll on Saturday showed that Harris, who launched her campaign last month after President Joe Biden abandoned his re-election bid, has taken leads in four states where Trump looked set to easily prevail over Biden.
The survey showed that the US Vice President and Democratic nominee is leading Trump among likely voters in Arizona and North Carolina, and the former Republican president’s lead has narrowed in Georgia and Nevada.
A New York Times/Siena College poll released last week also found Harris at 50 percent support among voters in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, while Trump had 46 percent support in each state.
Harris’s bid for the White House has reinvigorated an election race that had largely failed to inspire many Americans disappointed by the choice between Trump and Biden.
The two faced off in 2020, with Biden defeating his predecessor, which Trump falsely claimed was marred by widespread fraud.
In that election, Trump lost Pennsylvania to Biden by a narrow margin, but he enjoys strong support in rural areas and small towns.
Now that Harris is at the top of the Democratic Party’s ticket for 2024, Trump is struggling to find an effective way to counter her campaign.
Recent statements from Trump’s team have focused on issues like immigration and inflation, but he has spent the bulk of recent speeches making personal attacks against Harris’s identity.
“Hard-working Americans are suffering because of the dangerous liberal policies of the Harris-Biden Administration,” the Trump campaign said in a statement ahead of Saturday’s rally in Wilkes-Barre.
It states, “Prices are high, the cost of living is skyrocketing, crime is soaring, and illegal immigrants are pouring into our country”, though recent actions along the U.S.-Mexico border have largely stemmed the flow of immigrants and asylum seekers.
He also attacked Harris on Thursday over the economy, saying she has “very strong communist leanings” who would bring “the death of the American dream.”
For her part, Harris — who will travel to Chicago next week for the Democratic National Convention — has promised to “lower costs and increase economic security for all Americans.”
In one of his first major policy speeches of the campaign on Friday, he laid out a set of proposals he said would help boost the economy and tackle food “price hikes.”
“I will remain laser-focused on creating opportunity for the middle class,” Harris told a crowd of supporters in North Carolina. “Together, we will build what I call the opportunity economy.”
