SCRANTON – Both presidential campaigns are descending on Scranton, Pa., President Joe Biden’s hometown, as the swing state counts down to Election Day.
Donald Trump Jr., Republican candidate Donald Trump’s son, is visiting the town for a Get Out The Vote Fall Festival on Oct. 26, on the heels of a Kamala Harris-Tim Walz rally, as the Democratic and Republican parties vie for the states’ 19 electoral votes. According to poll analysts, Pennsylvania may prove vital for either side to secure a victory.
Tim Walz pitched himself as the next vice president to come from a middle-class family to hundreds of prospective voters at a rally on Friday, Oct. 25, 10 days before the election.
The Democratic vice presidential candidate labeled indifference towards the next election’s outcome as “dangerous complacency.” Trump leads Harris by one point, 50% to 49%, in the latest Franklin and Marshall College Poll, released on Thursday morning.
During his address, Walz touched on top-ballot issues including Trump’s fitness for office, abortion rights, the job market, and the broader economy, an issue the NYT/Siena College Poll shows Trump is the preferred candidate by 7 percentage points.
“(Trump) was killing jobs here in Pennsylvania,” Walz said at the Scranton Cultural Center at the Masonic Temple.
The U.S. saw a net loss of 188,000 manufacturing jobs by the end of the Trump presidency, according to FactCheck.org, a tool used to analyze Harris and Trump’s assertions against each other. Around 43,000 of these positions were lost from 2019 to 2020, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Pennsylvania’s manufacturing workforce was in steady decline prior to the pandemic.
Walz highlighted Democratic candidate Kamala Harris’s economic policy, which includes tax breaks for entrepreneurs starting small businesses.
Walz stood behind a stage-length sign that read “Pennsylvania Votes Early.” Democratic absentee and mail-in ballots totaled over 760,000 in the state’s election data as of Friday, Oct. 25. Republican ballots tally to about 390,000.
(Photograph by Julaiza Alvarez)
