At Pennsylvania Rally, Team Trump Pushes Early Voting

Happy Thursday! Election Day is 26 days away. David and Mike are in Reading, Pennsylvania, with plans to head over to the neighboring Lehigh Valley later in the day.

Up to Speed

• Former President Donald Trump led Vice President Kamala Harris by 3 points in Michigan and 2 points in Wisconsin, while Harris had a 3-point edge in Pennsylvania in a Quinnipiac University poll of likely voters in “blue wall” states released Wednesday. In a survey from last month, the same pollster found that Harris had a lead in Pennsylvania with a slight advantage in Michigan, while there was a practical tie in Wisconsin.
• Harris has raised more than $1 billion since she entered the presidential race in late July, the New York Times reported Wednesday. The campaign does not have to file its total fundraising for September with the Federal Election Commission until next Tuesday. The Trump campaign, along with the Republican National Committee, has raised about $853 million, per the Times, and it raised $160 million last month.
• Trump once again closed the door on the possibility of another debate with Harris Wednesday, just after Fox News proposed a second contest for late October. “IT IS VERY LATE IN THE PROCESS, VOTING HAS ALREADY BEGUN – THERE WILL BE NO REMATCH! BESIDES, KAMALA STATED CLEARLY, YESTERDAY, THAT SHE WOULD NOT DO ANYTHING DIFFERENT THAN JOE BIDEN, SO THERE IS NOTHING TO DEBATE. THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER!” he wrote in a Truth Social post. Since the September 10 debate, the Harris campaign has said it would do another, but Trump said he would not.

Up to Speed (Pennsylvania Road Trip Edition)

• While Trump supporters lined up to attend the Republican nominee’s rally in downtown Reading, a sizable group of Harris supporters stood just outside a police barricade. The rally attendees mostly ignored the protest, though a few yelled back when pro-Harris supporters shouted accusations that Trump is a rapist.
• It was difficult to find a rally attendee who was not wearing some kind of Trump paraphernalia—either a MAGA hat, a button, or, most usually a graphic shirt. The iconic photograph of Trump raising a defiant fist in the air after the attempt on his life in Butler was a popular shirt choice, though there were plenty of others: a sweatshirt that read “Grab ‘em by the p—y” with a cartoonish image of Trump reaching out toward a screaming cat; a T-shirt showing Ronald Reagan wearing a red “TRUMP” hat; a T-shirt that read “Say NO to the hoe” with an image of Harris; and a T-shirt that read “I have PTSD: pretty tired of stupid Democrats.”
• As for Trump, his performance was typical. (Yes, the crowd loved it.) For nearly 90 minutes, he spoke from the podium, regaling in the accomplishments of his White House term, complaining about being treated unfairly by the media (among other grievances), insisting he won the 2020 election, highlighting new proposals for a second term (such as eliminating the income tax on tips and executing the mass deportation of illegal immigrants) and of course, criticizing Harris, to put it mildly. “We can’t have another dumb president,” Trump said at one point. “Somebody said to me, one of my people, nice person, staff person, said: ‘Sir, please, don’t call her dumb. The women won’t like it.’ The women want to see our country come back, they don’t care … I think [women] like me anyway, I think it’s all bullsh–t.”
• Trump is using more visual aids in his rallies, and multiple times during his speech Wednesday he tossed to video playing on jumbotron screens. One was from Harris’ appearance this week on The View, when she was asked what she would have done differently than President Joe Biden and answered, “There is not a thing that comes to mind.” That video got plenty of boos. Another video sought to illustrate a decline in the U.S. military from “then” and “now,” with quick cuts between clips from the boot camp scenes in the 1987 anti-Vietnam War film Full Metal Jacket with TikTok snippets of members of the military in drag and a clip of Biden administration official Rachel Levine, who is transgender.

Team Trump: Get Out to Vote—Early!

READING, Pennsylvania— “VOTE EARLY!” read a banner hanging in the rafters at Donald Trump’s Wednesday evening rally.

The same words were on the thin LED display above the Santander Arena’s seating, ringing the interior perimeter, flashing between other messages such as “VOTE TRUMP for NO TAX ON TIPS” and “PENNSYLVANIA is TRUMP COUNTRY.” And as fans filed into their seats in anticipation of the former president’s appearance, the suspended jumbotron screens above the floor repeatedly displayed information encouraging attendees to “secure a mail-in ballot today,” providing deadlines for registering to vote and requesting mail ballots, plus a QR code linking to more information. Oh, and a couple more “VOTE EARLY!” messages.

Polls show Trump locked in a tight race with Vice President Kamala Harris for Pennsylvania’s crucial 19 Electoral College votes, with both campaigns pouring massive resources and devoting precious time into the state. On Wednesday, Trump hosted a campaign rally in Scranton—located in critical Lackawanna County—before heading here to Reading, a heavily Hispanic, working-class city of just under 100,000 residents in Berks County.* (Harris heads to bellwether Erie County on Monday.)

As Trump tries to recapture the Keystone State—which the GOP nominee won narrowly in 2016 but lost to Joe Biden four years later—his campaign is working to reverse baked-in skepticism of mail-in voting among his ardent supporters. The former president himself had long expressed distrust in mail-in ballots, saying back in 2020 during his reelection effort that the practice would “rig” the election against him. Perhaps not surprisingly, Biden voters were nearly twice as likely as Trump voters to say that they voted by mail in 2020.

Unsurprisingly, Republicans in states like Pennsylvania were far less likely to vote by mail than Democrats, and leaders at the Republican National Committee have been trying to undo that damage ahead of this election. That effort has included a well-funded campaign specifically targeting their voters in Pennsylvania. The enthusiasm among Republican voters and other Trump partisans for sending the former president back to the White House was plain to see in Reading, where a boisterous crowd of roughly 6,000 stood for much of his rally, recording the moments on their smartphones as if at a rock concert.

But it’s clear the Trump campaign worries not all of that support will translate into votes—hence the push to convince Trump voters to participate early via mail. So far, requests for mail ballots in the state continue to come mostly from Democrats. Ballots began going out in Pennsylvania late last month. Voters here have until October 29 to apply to vote by mail, and mail ballots must be returned to the county election office (not simply postmarked) by November 5.

The speakers warming up the crowd before Trump came on stage in Reading did their best to even the scales, at least. “Vote early,” said Stephen Miller, the Trump senior adviser and speechwriter. “Get your friends, get your colleagues, and everyone you know. Send in those ballots.” 

Ann Marie Slavick, a captain for the Republican nominee’s network of neighborhood volunteers known as Trump Force 47, spoke at length about the importance of voting by mail and tried to reassure the audience that doing so was safe and secure. “So, don’t be afraid to vote early. It’s okay,” said Slavick, who lives in Northampton County. “We have to remember something: On Election Day we may have issues, we may have illnesses. What if we get home from work late? What if the line is too long? What if they run out of paper? We have to remember that we can do mail-in ballots.”

Even Trump himself managed to include a reference to early voting at the end of his otherwise typical campaign rally speech. “Early voting in Pennsylvania is underway,” he said. “What the hell are you doing sitting here? Go!”

But the appeals to get a mail-in ballot may be wasted on Trump’s most dedicated fans, who are both determined to vote for their hero and are the most likely to retain a preference for in-person, Election Day voting. Melaina Wiker, a 48-year-old special education teacher from Lancaster, told Dispatch Politics she plans to vote for Trump on November 5. The same goes for Mike DeBonis, a 32-year-old accountant from Nazareth wearing a red MAGA baseball cap.

“Probably voting on Election Day,” he told us. “Considering a mail-in.”

Eyes on the Trail

• Vice President Kamala Harris this afternoon will participate in a Univision town hall in Las Vegas. Harris then travels to Phoenix, where she will host an evening campaign rally.
• Former President Donald Trump today will be in Michigan, where he will deliver remarks to the Detroit Economic Club.
• Sen. J.D. Vance, the Republican vice presidential nominee, will host a Trump campaign town hall in Greensboro, North Carolina, this evening with special guest Danica Patrick.
• Also in North Carolina, after launching yesterday, the Team Trump Bus Tour with figures including Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, former Department of Defense Chief of Staff Kash Patel, and former White House deputy press secretary Hogan Gidley, will make three stops—in Concord, Gastonia, and Charlotte, with Stefanik participating in the latter two.
• Second gentleman Doug Emhoff will be in Newnan, Georgia, where he will deliver remarks at a Harris campaign reception before traveling to Atlanta, where he will speak at an Atlanta Pride kickoff event and get-out-the-vote rally. 

Notable and Quotable

“Pennsylvania is a wrestling state, and my friends, we’re going into the third period right now. And I always knew in college when I was wrestling that if I could go into the third period within a point or two, I was going to win. And the reason I’m going to win, and the reason we’re going to win, is the third period’s not about wrestling. It’s about mental toughness, it’s about heart, it’s about staying on offense.”

—David McCormick, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania, at a rally for Donald Trump in Reading, October 9, 2024

Correction, October 10, 2024: This article has been updated to correct the county in which Scranton is located.