‘I feel very powerful and very scared’: Pennsylvanians face pressure to vote in key swing state | US election 2024

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, waiting to cast his vote for Donald Trump.

It was the first time 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 state in southeastern Pennsylvania where he lives. He continued to be bombarded with “probably 50 text messages” urging him to get out and vote, so he did.

“A lot of the news agencies that we follow, they said they were trying to get as many Trump supporters to vote early, to try to stave off as much fraud as they could,” he said.

Haegele’s decision to spend his anniversary waiting to vote underscored the stakes for 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 road to 270 electoral votes to win the election is more complicated for the candidate who doesn’t win it. Both Trump and Kamala Harris have criss-crossed the state during the last week of the campaign, holding dueling rallies about an hour apart on Monday in the Lehigh Valley, one of the most competitive parts of the state. Harris dedicated the entire final day of the campaign to Pennsylvania, making four stops in the state.

“I’m pretty scared,” said Sonny Berenson, 20, a student at Muhlenberg College who attended Harris’ rally there on Monday. “This is probably the most contested election in American history, and we live in a state that can decide it. So I feel very strong and very scared, but of course I hope and pray that Kamala wins.”

Sitting in the stands a few rows away, Danielle Shackelford, 68, a Pennsylvania Lottery worker 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 quietly supported Harris on the issue.

“They’re fighting with everything inside them to fight against what’s been put out there,” she said. “What Trump has done, he has sparked the anger of women.”

Both campaigns are vying 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 last week trying to shore up that support after a comedian called Puerto Rico a “floating lake 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 they thought the joke was in bad taste, but that wouldn’t affect how people would make up their minds.

A staggering $1.2 billion has been spent on political advertising in the state, according to NPRmost out of any swing mode. It is the first time that spending in a single American state has exceeded 1 billion. USD in a cycle, the outlet reported. The mid-states in the state are littered with billboards for both candidates. Lawn signs and billboards are almost evenly distributed, with houses next to each other and across the street supporting different candidates. Despite all this spending, polls show the race is dead even.

There has also been intense legal wrangling over whether postal votes should be rejected on technicalities. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled in late October that the state did not have to accept mail ballots that were undated. Then the US Supreme Court ruled on Friday that those who should have had their mail-in ballot rejected because they forgot to put it in a secrecy envelope could cast a provisional ballot on Election Day.

Trump has used alarmist rhetoric in the final week of the campaign to reinforce what has already been clear for months: he will refuse to accept a loss in Pennsylvania or any other states he might lose. He told supporters in Lilitz on Sunday that he “shouldn’t have left” the White House.

He also misrepresented an investigation into potentially fraudulent voter registration applications in Lancaster county to falsely suggest that fraudulent votes were being cast. While officials there are investigating suspicious registration forms, they have not said any illegal votes have been cast.

Read more about the Guardian’s 2024 US election coverage

“I think it’s going to be a blowout,” Haegele 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 urged supporters to vote early. It’s a message that resonated with voters like Rene Diaz, Jr., a 36-year-old machinist who waited about 45 minutes to vote in Bucks County on Halloween.

“In 2020, you had certain polling places where the water supply had allegedly broken and all this stuff was happening and people weren’t able to vote,” he said. A water main broke at State Farm Arena in Atlanta while ballots were being counted in 2020; the didn’t stop anyone from voting.

Diaz said his main issues this election were the economy, foreign policy and the border.

“We’re drowning in so much debt that we shouldn’t be helping fight two wars and sending countries to fight two wars and helping fund other programs,” he said. “I have children, and it is important that my children grow up with the life I have.

“They choose 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’ rally in Allentown at 6.00 Monday with his son and grandson. She said she had been a Republican for more than 50 years but changed her registration five days after Jan. 6.

Joe Biden won Pennsylvania by just over 88,000 votes in 2020, wresting the state from Trump. His victory offers a road map for what Harris will need to do to carry the state — get monster votes in Philadelphia’s Democratic-leaning suburbs, cut into Trump’s margins in Republican areas and win back working-class voters in the state’s northeast.

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, bettering 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 was concerned about violence on election day. During the early voting period, she had to call a sheriff to the elections office to break up a fight. One of the poll workers was called a racial slur and another was spat on. The county has installed new barriers at the election office, and all other state employees will work 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 the door. Jessica Brittain, the group’s director of organizing and communications, reviewed a script canvassers could use on the doors. “We know that abortion is one of the biggest motivators in all the races we’ve worked on this year,” she said.

One of the people on 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 dispatched a replacement.

“I want a president who openly tells the truth and makes decisions based on facts,” he said.

Later Sunday afternoon, Jimmy Conroy, a 27-year-old who leads Action Together’s procession, milled between houses on the south side of Wilkes-Barre. Many of the doors were already filled with flyers for various candidates. The day before, Conroy said someone called police looking for him (the officers left without incident).

Conroy has spent years knocking on doors in Pennsylvania, and one of the things that has stood out to him the most in this election is the age difference between people who support Trump and Harris.

Younger people, he said, are “either undecided or leaning toward Trump.”

At Harris’ rally in Allentown on Monday, Carmen Bell, 68, said she chose to be optimistic about the results.

“I cannot allow myself to lean into the negative because it is so out of this world. I feel like she’s going to get it done and it’s not going to be as close as it looks,’ she said.