Trump v. Harris: Swing State Poll Shows Candidate Barely Leading
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Pennsylvania voters are divided in the 2024 race now that Vice President Kamala Harris has emerged as the de facto Democratic nominee. In the week since President Joe Biden ended his reelection bid, Harris has seen a surge in enthusiasm and poll numbers that already appear to be fading.
The 800 voters in the battleground states polled in Pennsylvania from July 23 to 25 favor Harris by a trivial one-point margin, within the 3.46 percentage point margin of error in a head-to-head Trump-Harris contest. But when third-party candidates in the Commonwealth Foundation survey are considered, the two frontrunners are neck-and-neck at 44 percent, with Democrat-turned-independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in second place at 6 percent.
Harris has not yet announced her running mate, but Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania is on the shortlist of three people to be the Democratic vice presidential nominee, according to Bloomberg. The others are Gov. Mark Kelly of Arizona and Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota. All three are middle-aged to older white men, which some have argued is necessary on a list that features a Black and Asian woman as frontrunners.
Shapiro is joined by Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer for a campaign swing around Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on Monday in support of Harris. A separate Fox News poll also released Friday shows Trump and Harris tied at 49 percent in Pennsylvania.
The Keystone State is one of the most important states to win its 19 electoral votes in November. Trump won Pennsylvania by just 0.7 percent in 2016 before the state flipped blue in 2020, favoring Biden over the incumbent president by 1.2 percent.
Pennsylvania is one of three toss-up states for 2024, according to the Cook Political Report. The other two are also Rust Belt states Michigan and Wisconsin. If Harris chooses Shapiro to join her on the ticket, it could be in the hopes of a victory in Pennsylvania in November.
Whitmer, who was once thought to be considering a 2024 presidential bid, says Harris will likely pick her running mate in the next six or seven days — just before the Democratic National Convention next month. Despite Shapiro’s potential to win over blocs of Pennsylvanians and Jewish voters, some could be turned off by his split with Democrats over support for private school vouchers, which would provide parents with public money to cover the cost of private education.
“It is important that we lift up all of God’s children, and we pay special attention to the poor children in struggling school districts,” Shapiro said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal in December 2023. More than two dozen small pro-public education groups sent a letter to Harris last week urging her not to choose Shapiro as her vice chair.
“He’s far too pro-school privatization to be vice president,” said Beth Lewis, an Arizona public schools activist. “We don’t have to be soft on this issue because public education is the cornerstone of our democracy.”
