Pennsylvania
Harris campaign sees its path to victory in Pennsylvania running through the suburbs
Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign laid out what it sees as her path to victory in Pennsylvania in a memo shared exclusively with NBC News ahead of Monday night’s rally in bellwether Erie County.
The Harris team pointed to polls showing Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, having made gains in the battleground state’s suburbs — which it dubbed “our own mini ‘blue wall’” in Pennsylvania — compared with President Joe Biden’s 2020 performance there.
The campaign also emphasized that a win involves boosting its popularity among educated suburbanites, including those who have voted for Republicans in recent elections. Nearly 160,000 voters in the state cast ballots for former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley in the GOP presidential primary this year — with her numbers proving stronger among suburban voters — even after she had already dropped out of the race against former President Donald Trump.
“The Harris campaign’s path to win Pennsylvania capitalizes on Trump’s unprecedented weakness in the suburbs,” reads the memo, which also highlighted the campaign’s focus on Haley voters. “We have flipped the suburbs from red to blue since Trump won them in 2020, and we have also grown our support with women and tripled our support among white college educated voters in the state.”
The campaign cited surveys last month from The Philadelphia Inquirer/The New York Times/Siena College and Marist College that both showed Harris up 6 percentage points over Trump in the suburbs — a notable improvement from Trump’s 3-point victory over Biden among suburban Pennsylvanians in 2020, as exit polls showed. (The results in both of the surveys last month fell within their margins of error.)
Recent surveys have found the overall race in Pennsylvania to be within the margin of error for polls, with a survey from Quinnipiac University this month finding Harris up 3 points, an Inquirer/Times/Siena survey finding her up 4 points and The Wall Street Journal having Trump up 1 point.
It’s the most sought-after battleground on the map, offering the most Electoral College votes among the hotly contested states, and it is the most frequent campaign destination for both Harris and Trump.
Trump’s “weakness in the suburbs means that for him to actually win, he has to double and triple down on his base in the reddest counties in the state,” said Brendan McPhillips, a senior adviser to Harris’ Pennsylvania campaign. “And so we are going on offense and going to places where he thinks he has a strength and competing.”
The campaign highlighted events that Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, have held in red counties like Johnstown, Lancaster and Rochester. It also detailed investments made in red parts of the state to “cut margins and stop Trump’s only hope of victory,” noting that 16 of its 50 statewide campaign offices are in counties Trump won by more than 10 points in 2020.
Recent presidential elections in Pennsylvania have been exceptionally close. Biden defeated Trump in 2020 by just over 1 point. In 2016, Trump beat former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by an even slimmer margin.
“With most polls showing this to be a margin of error race, we are also going on offense with rural voters to cut into Trump’s margins — a critical advantage as Trump’s team lacks the ground game capacity to conduct persuasion and mobilization campaigns simultaneously,” the Harris campaign memo reads.
McPhillips said improving on Biden’s margins in those counties by just 1 to 2 points would effectively cut off Trump’s path to flipping the state red.
“We’re eating into his margins in a way that cannot sustain a victory,” he said. “And that is how we’re going to beat him, and it’s how we’re able to play offense on so many fronts.”
The campaign highlighted that as of Sunday it had knocked on more than 1 million doors across the state, including 250,000 over the weekend, since Harris replaced Biden atop the Democratic ticket. It also referred to its 50 offices and 450 on-the-ground staff members.
Harris has so far spent far more time in the western part of the state, including rural areas, than she has in the Philadelphia market, which McPhillips said is partly to help introduce her to voters who may be less familiar with her.
For Trump, billionaire mogul Elon Musk ramped up his political engagement in the state this month through his America PAC, which is working to turn out the vote for Trump.
McPhillips dismissed the potential impact of that effort.
“They can’t scale up to the level that we’re at,” he said. “Even with Elon Musk’s money, you can’t spend enough money to scale up an operation to match ours. It’s too late. You needed to start in March, February, January, and they’ve just been phoning it in for so long. It’s going to be close, for sure. We’ve always been planning for it to be so. But that planning manifests itself in the fact that we actually had a plan, not a concept of one.”
The Trump campaign said the Harris campaign is papering over a problem it faces in Pennsylvania cities — particularly Philadelphia, the most vote-rich locale for Democrats in the state.
“They can point to the suburbs, but they’re losing ground in places like Philadelphia,” a Trump campaign official said. “It’s exactly why [former President Barack] Obama was just pleading to African American men to vote for her. They’ve sounded the alarms, and they know they’re losing.”
The Trump campaign also pointed to Republicans’ having significantly cut into the Democratic voter registration advantage in the state while flipping Bucks, Luzerne and Beaver counties to Republican registration edges. It further highlighted reports that working-class voters in Philadelphia have embraced Trump.
Kush Desai, the Trump campaign’s Pennsylvania spokesperson, highlighted Obama’s visit as a sign the Harris team was scrambling. “An Obama visit isn’t going to convince Pennsylvanians to vote for another four years of open borders, rising prices, and disaster at home and abroad,” Desai said in a statement.
In its memo, the Harris campaign said it believes it will be able to “at least match” Biden’s support in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia in his victory in those cities four years ago. It went into greater detail about its efforts to reach Black voters in the state, including the staff members it has dedicated to outreach and engagement and its events focused on Black voters.
Last week, Obama offered unscripted remarks during a Pittsburgh campaign stop in which he said his understanding of the race is that “we have not yet seen the same kinds of energy and turnout in all quarters of our neighborhoods and communities as we saw when I was running. … [T]hat seems to be more pronounced with the brothers.”
Seeking to speak directly to Black men, he pushed for undecideds to get behind Harris, saying her record deserves their support.
“This is excellence on display, and it needs to be rewarded,” Obama said.
State Sen. Vincent Hughes told NBC News he could “understand the frustration” Obama expressed.
“Maybe the tone should have been a little bit different,” he said. “But let’s be real clear about this. Let’s get to the substance of what he said. There’s nothing in Donald Trump’s background, career, anything that should lead any citizen, let alone Black men, to vote for him. He’s not a successful businessman. … He was sued for discrimination in housing.”
Hughes said the Harris campaign is going to hit its targets among both Black men and voters in Philadelphia, adding that he has seen a flood of campaign activity there recently that has outpaced what Democrats were doing in 2020 during the worst of the Covid pandemic.
“It’s going in the right way for the vice president,” he said. “Look, for a woman and for a Black woman, it’s always harder. It’s not fair, it’s not right, but it’s always harder. Maybe if we break through with this election, we can finally smash that glass ceiling and not make it so hard for the next one.”
Pennsylvania
Police hunt for masked suspects who looted a Pennsylvania Lululemon overnight
Pennsylvania police are searching for at least two masked suspects believed to have looted a Lululemon store overnight.
At least two masked men broke into a Lululemon in Ardmore, Pennsylvania, around 2 a.m. Tuesday, police told NBC 10 Philadelphia. Ardmore, a suburb of Philadelphia, is home to about 14,000 people.
The suspected thieves used a sledgehammer to break the glass on the store’s front door, according to police.
Once they gained access, the masked individuals grabbed handfuls of merchandise, security footage shows. The men went in and out of the store several times, grabbing handfuls of items that included coats, vests and shirts from the men’s section, police told local outlet WPVI.
“This is taking it to another level,” Lower Merion Police Superintendent Andy Block told WPVI.
The suspects then loaded the merchandise into a U-Haul truck. Their truck was last seen at the intersection of Bryn Mawr Avenue and Woodbine Avenue, just a few miles from the store, police said.
The entire incident lasted about five minutes, which Block said is longer than usual for this type of burglary.
“Usually, it is because in a smash-and-grab situation they want to get in and get out before they’re identified or anybody’s notified on it,” Block told CBS Philadelphia.
Block told WPVI the store is a popular target for robbers, given that many of its items cost more than $100. Now, he expects the alleged thieves have sold or exchanged the items.
“They’re using it on the market, maybe they’re exchanging it for drugs, or they’re selling it on the black market. It’s a highly sought-after item,” he told WPVI.
Even though police say Lululemon is a popular target, Lt. Michael Keenan of the Lower Merion Police Department still called the incident “out of character.”
“This is an out of character, out of type incident where we don’t normally see people smashing windows in the middle of the night. But, certainly this is something that is distinct,” Keenan told NBC 10 Philadelphia.
The store still opened Tuesday, with a banner covering the smashed glass on the door, according to Fox 29. Gina Picciano, a general manager at a restaurant across the street, said it was a frightening incident.
“I walked out here with my bartender and we looked, and it’s scary that it’s happening right across the way from us,” Picciano told Fox 29.
The same store was previously robbed in May 2024. Thieves stole more than $10,000 worth of merchandise during that incident, NBC 10 Philadelphia reports.
The Independent has contacted the Lower Merion Police Department and Lululemon for comment.
Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania Gov. Shapiro has $30 million for his reelection bid, a new state record
Pennsylvania
3 winning scratch-off lotto tickets totaling $7.5M sold in Pennsylvania
RADNOR TWP., Pa. (WPVI) — Three winning scratch-off tickets totaling $7.5 million were sold in Pennsylvania, lottery officials announced on Monday.
One winning “MONOPOLY Own It All” ticket worth $5 million was sold in Delaware County at the GIANT on the 500 block of East Lancaster Avenue. The grocery store will receive a $10,000 bonus for selling the winning ticket.
“MONOPOLY Own It All” is a $50 game that offers top prizes of $5 million.
In Erie County, a $1.5 million-winning “Cash Spectacular” scratch-off was purchased at a Sheetz on Perry Highway. “Cash Spectacular” is a $30 game that offers top prizes of $1.5 million.
And in Luzerne County, a $1 million-winning “Millionaire Loading” scratch-off was sold at Schiel’s Family Market in Wilkes-Barre. “Millionaire Loading” is a $20 game that offers top prizes of $1 million.
Scratch-off prizes expire one year from the game’s end-sale date posted at palottery.com.
Winners should immediately sign the back of their ticket and call the Pennsylvania Lottery at 1-800-692-7481.
Copyright © 2026 WPVI-TV. All Rights Reserved.
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