WASHINGTON – In battleground Pennsylvania, Kamala Harris warned that democracy and reproductive rights were at stake as she campaigned alongside a former Republican congresswoman.
Going to the same state the day before, Donald Trump served French fries at a closed McDonald's.
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As the 2024 presidential contest speeds to its conclusion on Nov. 5, Harris and Trump are embracing wildly different strategies to energize the coalitions they need to win. Both are making bets that will prove prescient or ill-advised.
Trump's team has largely abandoned traditional efforts to broaden his message to target moderate voters, focusing instead on energizing his base of fiery partisans and turning out low-propensity voters — especially young men of all races — with tough talk and events aimed at getting attention online.
Harris is leaning into a more traditional all-of-the-above playbook targeting the narrow slice of undecided voters that remain, especially moderates, college-educated suburbanites, and women of all races and education. More than Trump, she is going after Republican women who may have supported rival Nikki Haley in this year's GOP primary and are dissatisfied with the former president.
“It’s all pieces of a very complex puzzle,” Harris senior campaign adviser David Plouffe said this week. “This would all be a simpler exercise if you can focus just on one voter cohort. You can’t. And you got to make sure you know you’re doing well enough with all of them so that when you put all that together it adds up to 50%.”
Trump's team sees it as a much simpler equation.
His aides insist that efforts to maximize turnout from Trump’s hardcore base do not mean he's ignoring swing voters, even if he's not tailoring a different message to reach them.
“I just think that there’s a misunderstanding on what’s motivating those people," Trump political director James Blair said. "I mean, the fact is the economy’s motivating those people. Those people overwhelmingly think that they’re worse off than they were four years ago ... So then the question becomes: Who’s better equipped to fix it?”
The divergent strategies underscore the stark differences between the candidates themselves, in personality and policy.
Harris, a former California senator who would be the first female president, has promised to include a Republican in her Cabinet, while prioritizing efforts to protect democracy, reproductive rights and the middle class. Trump, a former president, has vowed to fight for the working class as well. He also has promised a campaign of retribution against his political enemies with an administration packed with loyalists.
One point on which both camps agree: The election will be decided by voters in just seven swing states, a political map that has not shifted significantly or narrowed as Election Day speeds into view. They are Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina.
One Harris adviser, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss internal strategy, described the situation as “still terrifyingly close in all seven.”
Trump rejects the traditional pivot to the middle
Trump is speaking largely to his loyal Republican base at the expense of moderate voters, especially suburban women. He peppers his rallies with profanity, personal insults against Harris and ominous talk of “enemies within.”
He has said repeatedly over the last week that Democrats like former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., represent a more serious threat to the United States than China and Russia do.
Trump has also rejected recent opportunities to speak to more traditional audiences, turning down an interview with CBS' popular “60 Minutes” and refusing to debate Harris for a second time unless it was moderated by Fox News, home to several of his favorite conservative hosts.
Instead, his campaign is scheduling appearances on podcasts and online shows geared towards young men — especially working-class Hispanic and Black men, who typically vote less frequently and tend to favor Democrats.
He’s attended sporting events including mixed-martial arts fights and football games, putting him in front of audiences who don’t typically engage with traditional media outlets.
Josh Rouse, a 28-year-old Black man and registered Republican, said he’s only recently been drawn to politics. He didn’t vote in 2016, but voted for Trump in 2020.
“If anything, I think it’s important to remember we’re all people, regardless of whether you’re white or Black,” said Rouse, who works in roofing and attended Trump’s rally in Greenville, North Carolina, this week. “It doesn’t matter who you are. He speaks to all of us.”
Trump's team has also created viral moments in non-political settings like his trip to McDonald’s on Sunday, part of an extended campaign to cast doubt on Harris' work history at the fast-food franchise. Trump also went to Coachella, California, and will host a rally at Madison Square Garden in New York City on Sunday — both in heavily Democratic states but where the related media attention and online content would surely reach swing-state voters.
Trump has kept an aggressive schedule. He is set to visit every battleground state this week save Wisconsin.
Harris makes Republicans part of her persuasion playbook
Backed by an avalanche of campaign cash, Harris is holding in-person events but also launching a sprawling door-knocking operation, hyper-targeted online ads and a carefully designed media strategy to reach specific voting blocs.
Harris’ team believes that roughly 10% of voters in the battleground states are still persuadable, either because they are truly undecided or because their support for Trump is soft. The campaign vows to keep trying to persuade such voters until the final minutes of in-person voting.
Her team sees the possibility of significant growth among Republican, college-educated, suburban women alienated by Trump’s extreme rhetoric. Even small shifts in swing states could have massive electoral implications.
The Harris campaign quickly produced digital ads last week highlighting Trump’s description of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection as “a day of love.” And Harris spent most of Monday campaigning in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin alongside Liz Cheney, a Republican House leader during Trump's presidency who swung sharply against him after Jan. 6.
Harris is scheduled to visit Houston for an event Friday with women who have been affected by the state’s ban on all abortions, which took effect after the Supreme Court, including three justices nominated by Trump, overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. She’ll be going there after spending time in Georgia, which banned abortions after six weeks of pregnancy.
Nicolette Milholin, 45, of Mont Clare, Pennsylvania, said she considered herself a political independent until Trump was elected in 2016.
“To me, democracy is at stake,” Milholin said at a Harris event this week in Chester County, Pennsylvania. “We have a party that was built for a family and a dynasty. And then we have a party here represented by Kamala Harris, that was built for our country.”
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Peoples reported from New York. Colvin reported from Palm Beach, Florida. AP writers Colleen Long in Malvern, Pennsylvania, and Gary Robertson in Greenville, North Carolina, contributed to this report.