United States: Former US President Donald Trump is set to participate in a rally and a fundraiser at a former battleground state of Pennsylvania just a couple of days before his trial in New York scheduled on an alleged hush money scheme.
Pennsylvania’s Crucial Role
President Joe Biden, who will make many stops in the Commonwealth next week, will support him well. As reported by Reuters, he will begin his speech in his hometown of Scranton, explaining his plan to reshape the US tax system for Americans.
Pennsylvania, among the leading 50 states and with 19 voting electors, will be the top target in the coming 2024 presidential race. The voters of this state mostly lean Republican, so they tend to support candidates like Trump and Biden, who run for Democrats.
Pennsylvania was won by Biden in 2020 with little over 1.5% ord 80,000 votes, and Trump narrowly beat Hillary Clinton with 45,000 votes in 2016. Several state surveys conducted in March show Biden’s lead being narrowing down from a 10-point gap to only 4 points, a repetition viewed from the most-visited site on elections, FiveThirtyEight.
Democrats are relying upon strong turnout in Philadelphia and its suburbs, home to 33% of all voting registrations, to compensate for the many areas where they are losing votes. Trump and Republicans are aiming to obtain the largest possible number of less urban or predominantly white counties to marginalize urban votes.
According to the White House, which he publicized on Friday, Biden, who has visited Pennsylvania four times this year, will visit Pittsburgh and Philadelphia in three days.
Trump is supposed to be in Manhattan on Monday for the opening of the first criminal trial, one that relates to the hush money that he paid to the adult actress Stormy Daniels. The case will be heard over several weeks.
Trump’s Rally Strategy and Fundraiser Plans
Trump’s” Saturday “rally at “Schnecksville Fire Hall” in the Lehigh Valley is the result of consolidating Rust Belt cities, urban sprawl, and the rural countryside. Their strategy includes Northampton County, one of the two counties Biden turned in 2020, which has been a traditional indicator of future victory at the statewide level.
“If you win Northampton County, you will likely win the state. It’s that important of a location,” Chris Borick, a political science professor at Pennsylvania’s Muhlenberg University, remarked of Trump’s rally.
The former president will conduct a fundraiser with his rally in Bucks County, another bellwether area that Biden narrowly scraped through in his previous run. The event is being organized by Jim Worthington, who is a wealthy gym owner and has pulled Trump’s strings to stop him from attacking voting by mail. Around 200 folks are anticipated to be the attendees, from which the event will bring in a few million dollars, as indicated by those who are in the know about the event.
Borick is quite optimistic about this race, and it is going to be a “razor-thin race.”
SENATE RACE, POPULATION DECLINES
Pennsylvania is a sprawling place with complex politics, and history sees voters preferring statewide candidates who are best able to build consensus. This could affect the country’s highly monitored US Senate race, though.
Senate Race Dynamics and Population Decline
Current Senator Bob Casey, a Democrat, will face off against the former wealthy hedge fund executive Dave McCormick in one of the few Senate elections in 2024 that will determine who will become a majority in the upper chamber.
Race will be affected by population shifting even. In 2021, Pennsylvania’s population was estimated to be at 13 million people but has been on the decline in the two ensuing years, reaching 12.96 million population this past year. Since 2020, declines have arisen from counties that went for Biden, according to Franklin & Marshall’s analysis.
Democrats watch their voter registration edge slip in the state due to them losing rural votes and blue-collar voters who now go to the Republicans or get unenrolled in their voter records.
For the year 2020, the Democrats were ahead by nearly 700,000 registered voters, but now, as reported by Reuters, the Democratic advantage has been cut down to only 400,000 this year as more Democrats have changed to a non-party affiliation.
Analysts have suggested that the mass exodus could result from the supporters of the Republican Party who never used to change their party status first but only now do.