How Pennsylvania could determine the 2024 US presidential election

Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are fighting hard to win the swing state's 19 electoral votes

Tuesday November 5 is decision day for Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. AFP

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Jenny Zhang knocks on the white door of a modest home in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, hoping to convince its residents to go out and vote for Kamala Harris in Tuesday’s presidential election.

The diverse municipality bordering Philadelphia voted overwhelmingly for President Joe Biden in 2020, and if Ms Harris is to take the much-sought-after swing state, she’ll need big margins in urban areas like this.

“There is a pretty big Bangladeshi community here, and they are very strong Democrats,” Ms Zhang, who works for the organisation Asian Pacific Islander Political Alliance, which advocates for the needs of the community, told The National. In this election, it has thrown its support behind Ms Harris.

“We want to make sure our Asian community members are voting in this election.”

The group has knocked on more than 315,000 doors and made roughly 5.5 million phone calls in an effort to persuade Pennsylvanians to vote for Ms Harris, who is of Indian descent.

“Kamala Harris is a member of our community,” said Mohan Seshadri, executive director of APIPA. “She's someone we believe will actually make progress on things like housing, justice, health care, access, support for caregivers.”

Pennsylvania has been at the centre of the 2024 election, with both Ms Harris and her Republican rival Donald Trump devoting hundreds of millions of dollars to advertisements and huge portions of their hectic schedules.

“There's been over a billion dollars in campaign and election related spending by campaigns and by outside groups in Pennsylvania this cycle,” said Daniel Mallinson, an associate professor of public policy and administration at Penn State Harrisburg.

“We are inundated daily with text messages and phone calls and constant television ads, YouTube ads, Pandora ads, mailing, physical mailing to our houses, There has been a crush of campaign attention on Pennsylvania.”

Both Ms Harris and Mr Trump spent time in Pennsylvania on Monday making last-minute efforts to shore up support and urge more people to the polls.

While analysts believe there are seven swing states that either candidate could win on Tuesday, Pennsylvania, with its 19 electoral college votes is perhaps the most important, as the candidate who wins 270 electoral college votes will move into the White House in January.

“It's a coin flip in the Rust Belt states and those states are probably more important to Harris right now than to Trump, said David Paleologos, director of Suffolk University’s Political Research Centre. “All three of our polls last week, we had the results within the margin of error, and we polled the statewide numbers plus the bellwethers, so really, it's going to depend on who gets their vote out and who stays home.”

Thirty minutes outside of Philadelphia in suburban Bucks County, which Mr Trump narrowly lost in both 2016 and 2020, Monica Domanico is busy ringing up a customer who bought more than $100 worth of Trump merchandise.

Ms Domanico owns The Trump Store in Bensalem and she said Monday was one of her busiest days – a reflection, she hopes, of what might happen on Tuesday.

“People need to be able to purchase this stuff and to show their support for Trump because they love this man. This man is just awesome, what a great guy,” she told The National.

One customer, who wished only to be identified as Janice, said she was voting for Mr Trump because she did not believe Ms Harris’s economic policies would work.

“People can't afford to sell their home or move up, move down, do whatever. It's just that mortgage payment is insane these days,” the estate agent said.

Both Ms Domanico and Janice said they were not sure if they would trust the results of Tuesday’s election if Mr Trump were to lose.

The former president has refused to say whether or not he would honour the results. After the 2020 election, which he said was stolen, he spent four years claiming that Democrats had cheated to win.

“I'm hoping we made it too big to rig and we flooded them with votes and they can’t take it from us because I’ll put it right on the camera – it was stolen in 2020,” Ms Domanico said.