Per Gram Slattery
(Reuters) -Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump spoke at a rally in Pennsylvania on Sunday, his fourth campaign stop in a month in what has become the most contested state of the 2024 campaign.
The former president had begun addressing his supporters in Erie, in northwestern Pennsylvania, shortly after 2:00 p.m. local time (6:00 p.m. GMT). His rally comes a month after his running mate, U.S. Sen. JD (NASDAQ:) Vance, held his own event in the lakeside town, and six days before Trump holds another rally in western Pennsylvania , on October 5. .
Many Trump allies and informal advisers privately characterize Pennsylvania as the most important battleground state in the Nov. 5 election.
Of the seven competitive states in which both Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, his Democratic rival, have a realistic chance of winning, Pennsylvania is the most populous and awards the most votes in the Electoral College, which in turn is used to select the overall winner. of the election.
Trump allies generally believe that if the former president defeats Harris there, he will likely return to the White House. But if Trump loses to Harris in Pennsylvania, the vice president has the advantage.
Reflecting the stakes, Harris and Trump have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on ads in Pennsylvania in the months leading up to the election, more than any other state in gross and per capita terms.
Erie, the site of Trump’s rally, is a battleground within a battleground. Erie County is one of two Pennsylvania counties that favored Trump in the 2016 election against Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton before favoring President Joe Biden against Trump in 2020.
Trump narrowly won the state and the overall election in 2016, before losing both in 2020.
This time, Pennsylvania is competitive again, according to polls. Harris leads Trump by 1.6 percentage points in the state, according to an average of polls conducted by the polling and analysis website FiveThirtyEight. That difference is within the margin of error of almost all surveys.
Trump’s next rally in Pennsylvania, on Oct. 5, will take place in Butler, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) south of Erie. That city was the site of a failed assassination attempt on Trump in July. A bullet grazed the former president’s ear.