The crucial nature of Pennsylvania to the prospect of both Democrat and Republican presidential campaigns has been a constant theme in the 2024 race, and a series of recent developments have given the left cause for real concern.
As Breitbart reports, mail-in ballot return numbers in the Keystone State have revealed an 11-point swing in favor of Republicans thus far, a trend sure to have sparked frustration in the Kamala Harris camp.
News of the Republican surge came from Cliff Maloney, currently leading up the efforts of a GOP-supporting group called Pennsylvania Chase, who spoke to Breitbart News Saturday this weekend.
Maloney's group has spent significant time in Pennsylvania pursuing ballots from low-propensity voters who might otherwise fail to cast ballots, urging them to request and return mail-in paperwork.
At present, Maloney said, Republicans in the state had boosted their mail-in return numbers by 90,000 over the 2020 tally, something he declared to be evidence that the group's effort “is working.”
The margin he discussed represents an “11-point swing for Republicans,” a statistic sure to strike fear in the hearts of the Harris campaign.
Maloney elaborated, “The PA Chase is working. How do I know that? Not only from anecdotal conversations and direct feedback at the door but let's look at the numbers. If we compare 2020 at this time, compared to today for 2024, here are the specifics: Democrats are at 514,000 returns, Republicans are at 215,000 returns,” and he added that, compared to 2020, this is a massive boost for the GOP.
It is not just Republican ballot chase efforts that have sparked alarm among Harris supporters, as the Washington Free Beacon reports.
Democratic Party leaders and local liberals on the ground have expressed concerns that Harris has not engaged sufficiently with Latinos in the state, noting that their waning interest in her campaign could doom her hopes there for November.
Victor Martinez, who owns a Spanish radio station and supports the VP, opined that her campaign “needs to continue and do better at getting to the [Latino] community, getting them out to vote. Trump has created a macho persona, a personality that is very attractive to the Latino man, and I can say this because I am a Latino man.”
According to a report in Politico, numerous leaders within the Latino community in Pennsylvania have expressed concerns to the campaign about her declining support and lack of appropriate outreach in the state.
One leader noted, “I think that a lot of people in the Latino community, they're feeling that we're living check to check, and they're struggling. When we see how much support goes elsewhere, you hear people say, 'What about us?'”
Writing for the New York Post, Guy Ciarrocchi recently opined that in addition to her inattention to Pennsylvania's Latino voters, Harris has made a number of other key errors that could help hand the state to Trump next month.
From resting on Joe Biden's laurels in terms of entrenched support in Pennsylvania to bypassing the state's popular governor, Josh Shapiro, when selecting her running mate, Harris may have sown the seeds for a state-level defeat that could scuttle her chances of winning the entire election, and that is an outcome folks like Maloney would clearly relish.
