PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — The clock is winding down. Just over five weeks away from Election Day, campaigns in the race for the White House are shifting into higher gears.
There are blunders on both sides — Republican Donald Trump pushing the idea that “illegal aliens” are actually voting (a problem that doesn't exist); Democrat Kamala Harris lowballing the number of manufacturing jobs when Trump was president. Sadly, from the standpoint of lies, this has been a nasty campaign.
In the latest polling, three major surveys show Harris leading in most battleground states, except Arizona, and for the first time in Georgia. It's almost a dead heat, but in all those polls, both candidates are in the margin of error.
Independent polling is hard to find in Pennsylvania, but it's still close between Harris and Trump. The most recent polls show Harris up by four to six points, but the average of all polls to date is about a 1% lead for the VP, which is still a dead heat.
The Trump campaign in Pennsylvania is still conflicted about early voting. GOP Senate candidate Dave McCormick, once a champion of mail voting, is now joining the Party in trying to delay the mail vote in Montgomery County. It's too late. The first ballots have arrived, pleasing Democrat Bob Casey’s Senate campaign.
Republicans still want more moderation and less negativity from the Trump campaign. State GOP leaders are, again, hoping to hear more from Trump about solutions and less of his unchecked ad-libbing. And they do not want JD Vance to campaign in the state.
In fact, Vance was in Pennsylvania on Saturday to meet and greet supporters at a restaurant outside of Pittsburgh — but he was denied entry by the manager, who did not have advance notice of the visit and did not want to make the restaurant into a campaign stop. Vance was forced to address supporters in the parking lot instead, until he was finally granted entry — his staffers clicking into damage-control mode, calming the tempers of social media warriors, urging Republicans not to hold it against the restaurant workers.
Pennsylvania always seems elusive. Both parties have different problems.
Democratic insiders in Philadelphia are campaigning for more resources to get the vote out. This is an urgent request, even with a large registration advantage. Republicans in the city have weakness in the ranks, except for the far northeast.
Philadelphia’s suburban communities seem ready. Montgomery, Delaware and Chester counties are seeing heavy Democratic action, along with Pittsburgh and its suburbs. Bucks, the ultimate purple county, driven by book-banning controversies, is always the question mark, but gains in the far suburbs — Lancaster, York and Lucerne — flush with urbanites seeking a better life at a lower cost, have become potential battlegrounds and may fill the gaps.
Bottom line: It's still too close to call for both parties.
The overriding question in this now fast-and-furious campaign is turnout and ground game. In a close race, ground game is everything. I can tell you, having witnessed a total of 14 of these statewide races since 1968, that party leaders are more jittery than I have ever seen them.