PHILADELPHIA—Hillary Clinton’s campaign is aggressively outworking Donald Trump in battleground Pennsylvania, a state the billionaire businessman can scarcely afford to lose and still hope to become president.
Despite polling well in Pennsylvania throughout the summer, Clinton’s team is nevertheless bearing down in a state her party has carried in six straight elections. They are ratcheting up advertising and dispatching their top supporters to Pennsylvania, from Bill Clinton to Joe Biden to last week’s visit from President Barack Obama.
“We’ve got to fight for this thing,” Obama thundered at a rally in Philadelphia last Tuesday. “I need you to work as hard for Hillary as you did for me. I need you to knock on doors. I need you to make phone calls. You’ve got to talk to your friends, including your Republican friends.”
At a minimum, an energized Pennsylvania campaign is a balm for Clinton as she weathers a dip in national polls and dips in the swing states of Florida and Ohio. But with roughly seven weeks until Election Day, Trump’s scattershot approach to the state also puts his White House prospects in jeopardy.
“There is no Trump turnout organization, and you can’t construct one” in the time remaining, said former Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell.
For Trump, nearly any route to the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win the White House includes Pennsylvania’s 20 votes. With Clinton’s edge in Colorado and Virginia, and her competitive standing in North Carolina, Trump could potentially win vote-rich Florida and Ohio, as well as competitive Iowa and New Hampshire, and still fall short of the White House unless he can capture Pennsylvania, too.
Clinton’s strategy is focused firmly on the eastern part of the state. Obama won 85 percent of the vote in Philadelphia in 2012, and Clinton has her sights set on coming as close as she can to his performance there while also outperforming Obama in the four suburban counties bordering the city.
Almost 2 million votes, or fully one-third of the 5.67 million presidential votes cast in the state in 2012, came from Philadelphia plus Bucks, Chester, Delaware and Montgomery counties. It’s a region replete with moderate Republicans struggling with the decision about whether to support Trump.
Obama sought them out last week as he contrasted Trump’s criticism of the nation’s path with Ronald Reagan’s “vision of freedom.” The message echoes a Clinton television spot airing in the Philadelphia area featuring Romney and Republican U.S. senators blasting Trump as unqualified for the Oval Office.
That ad is part of Clinton’s deep edge over Trump on television in the state. Her campaign and outside groups helping her have spent about $14 million on general election TV and radio ads through this week, according to Kantar Media’s political ad tracker.
