Why Pennsylvania is a ‘much harder’ state for Biden in 2024

President Joe Biden’s rally with Vice President Kamala Harris at Girard College marked his fifth trip to the Philadelphia area this year and his seventh to Pennsylvania in 2024 alone. The campaign has opened two dozen field offices, and the president and his allies have poured tens of millions into the state, outspending former President Donald Trump and his backers there more than 4 to 1. And on Wednesday, speaking at a majority Black school in the state’s largest city, Biden and Harris used a rare dual campaign appearance to launch an organizing effort to win over Black voters, a critical constituency.

If it’s registering, there’s little sign of it yet.

Few states embody the steep challenges Biden faces in his rematch against Trump more than Pennsylvania, where he keeps showing up — and where he remains behind.

Not only is Biden’s polling at a slight disadvantage to Trump in a state he won by just 1 percentage point in 2020, but a New York Times/Siena College/Philadelphia Inquirer poll released this month highlighted his deteriorating support with young voters since his election, as well as a slide in support among Black and Hispanic voters. The president is also being outrun by Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.), who’s polling 10 points higher than Republican Dave McCormick for Senate.

“The goal for the Biden campaign is to try to keep that fragile coalition together. And it’s a much harder goal than it is for the Trump campaign, which is just to have people do nothing,” said Mustafa Rashed, a Philadelphia-based Democratic strategist. “If I’m Trump, I don’t need you to come out and vote for me, I need you to not go out and vote for that guy.”

Biden is banking heavily on Pennsylvania, which was home to his 2020 campaign headquarters. It’s a place he often pays homage to in campaign speeches — going by the nickname of “Scranton Joe.” And it’s a place where the Biden campaign believes it can reverse some of his losses with key constituencies.

“There’s a lot of running room for Joe Biden in Pennsylvania — with Black voters, young voters, we see a lot of upside potential for the president in the polls,” said Biden campaign pollster Geoff Garin. “But we’re realistic about the time and effort it will take to realize that potential. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and Pennsylvania won’t be won in a day. But at the end of the day, we feel confident that the president will win Pennsylvania again, along with the other ‘blue wall’ battleground states.”

On Wednesday, Biden and Harris appealed overtly to Black voters, the loss of whom could spell disaster for them in November. The campaign is planning an eight-figure investment in engagement with Black student groups, community and faith-based organizations across battleground states in the coming months.

“In 2020 Black voters in Philadelphia and across our nation helped President Biden and me win the White House,” Harris told the boisterous crowd, estimated by the campaign at roughly 1,000 people. “And in 2024 with your voice and your power, we will win again,” she said, moments after she and Biden walked out together to chants of “Four more years.”

In his remarks, Biden blistered Trump, tearing into his record on race.

“This is the same guy who wanted to tear gas you as you peacefully protested George Floyd’s murder,” he said. “It’s the same guy who still calls the ‘Central Park Five’ guilty, even though they were exonerated. He’s that landlord who denies housing applications because of the color of your skin. He’s that guy who won’t say Black lives matter and invokes neo-Nazi, Third Reich terms. We all remember Trump is the same guy who unleashed the birtherism lie against Barack.”

“Donald Trump is pandering and peddling lies and stereotypes for your vote so he can win for himself, not for you,” he continued. “Well Donald Trump, I have a message for you: Not in our house, and not on our watch.”

Biden's campaign aides and allies expect a tight race in the months ahead, arguing Biden’s biggest task is breaking through with undecided voters who are disengaged with politics and the news. A Biden campaign official, granted anonymity to speak candidly about their thinking, noted that the goal right now isn’t to change the poll numbers but to use the next few months to reach these voters with a deluge of travel, on-the-ground appearances and paid advertising. So far, Biden and his allies have outspent Trump and fellow Republicans in the state by roughly $42 million.

“The silver lining for this is that they’re not being complacent. They’re not saying we have these votes locked up, and we can move on to other places,” Rashed said of the Biden campaign. “They’re recognizing that there are challenges in places like Wisconsin and Philadelphia and Detroit — in those battleground states — Atlanta and across the country. They’re trying to do something about it.”

Democrats don’t deny the challenges facing Biden, but some argue the president’s climb is no steeper than Trump’s. To win Pennsylvania, the former president will have to cut into Biden’s margins in the suburbs of Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and to some degree in Harrisburg, where abortion remains a pivotal issue for voters, said Mike Mikus, a Democratic strategist in the state. And Trump still has work to do coalescing Republican voters in the state, after Nikki Haley, despite previously dropping out of the race, drew 20 to 25 percent of the vote in the suburban collar counties around Philadelphia in this month’s primary.

“Bottom line is, could Joe Biden lose Pennsylvania? Yes. Do I think he will? No. Quite frankly, you have to look at these suburban voters,” Mikus said, adding that Trump has an infrastructure disadvantage in the state. “I know [Biden’s] got a lot of challenges. There are a lot of things he has to overcome. But I do not think they’re as big as the challenges that Trump has to overcome to win Pennsylvania.”

For Biden, one of those major challenges is the president’s standing with Black voters, traditionally the most reliable Democratic bloc of the multiethnic coalition Biden and Harris stitched together four years ago.

The Times survey of five battleground states, including Pennsylvania, found that Trump continues to cut into Biden’s standing with Black voters, currently receiving some 20 percent of their vote. If those numbers hold, it would mark a more than double-digit improvement from Trump’s standing four years ago. It would also amount to the strongest level of support for a GOP presidential candidate in three generations.

That’s one reason Trump and his allies have made concerted efforts to show up in Democratic strongholds, including in Atlanta in April and last week in the heavily Latino and Black neighborhood in the Bronx, where Trump held a rally railing against policies he says have been detrimental to communities of color.

Trump’s surrogates have their eyes on Black voters in Philadelphia: Reps. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) and Wesley Hunt (R-Texas) are slated to host an event dubbed “Congress, Cognac and Cigars” next week in downtown Philadelphia, where they will discuss how the Black male vote could impact the outcome of the 2024 election.

“Joe Biden is a weak, failed and dishonest president whose disastrous policies have done nothing for our community besides driving up the cost of gas, groceries, and rent while making it nearly impossible to buy a home, start a new business or save money for the future,” Janiyah Thomas, the Trump campaign’s Black media director, said in a statement ahead of the Biden event.

Biden allies vehemently pushed back on this characterization, arguing that the Trump campaign has done nothing to build meaningful inroads with Black Americans.

Pennsylvania’s Lt. Gov. Austin Davis, who was set to appear alongside Maryland Gov. Wes Moore and Rep. Steven Horsford, head of the Congressional Black Caucus, at a Black-owned restaurant and jazz club later on Wednesday, pointed to the disparity in spending by Democrats and Republicans as evidence the outreach to Pennsylvania voters, including Black Americans, does not add up.

“Donald Trump isn’t trying to engage [Black] voters,” said Davis, the first Black person to be elected to that post. “He’s not building an apparatus to engage them. He’s not talking about the issues that they care about.”