Vice President Kamala Harris is projecting confidence about Pennsylvania despite Republicans closing the voter registration gap and polls underscoring she and former President Donald Trump are within the margin of error in the crucial battleground state.
“I’m very excited about the reports that we’re getting about enthusiasm,” Harris told reporters Sunday in Philadelphia. “To your point, Philadelphia is a very important part of our path to victory. And it is the reason I’m spending time here but I’m feeling very optimistic about the enthusiasm that’s here and the commitment from folks of every background.”
Harris and Trump are tied for Pennsylvania’s 19 electoral votes one week before the election, with the vice president having an average 0.2 percentage point lead, according to RealClearPolitics.
“To be very frank with you, my internal polling is my instinct,” Harris said, adding she will “let campaign people discuss that stuff.”
“Pennsylvania will be key. No doubt,” she went on.
Although Republicans have been registering to vote, Democrats are outperforming the GOP regarding the return of absentee ballots. As of Friday, Democrats have returned 56% of the 2 million requested ballots, though 245,000 ballots have been returned by independent voters, per the University of Florida’s Election Lab.
Harris spoke to reporters after addressing the predominately black Church of Christian Compassion in West Philadelphia and before she appeared at PhillyCuts to talk to black men and Hakim’s Bookstore and Gift Shop, an African American-theme book shop.
“We’re going to do it. Victory runs through Philly. It runs through Pennsylvania,” she said at Hakim’s Bookstore and Gift Shop.
Although Harris sidestepped a question about Tesla, SpaceX, and X billionaire owner Elon Musk‘s campaigning for Trump in Pennsylvania, she did respond to a query about whether she is concerned about the former president’s phone calls with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as Israel prepares to retaliate against Iran for its strikes on Oct. 1.
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“No, and I do believe that it is critically important that we as the United States of America be an active participant in encouraging one that this war ends, that we get the hostages out, but also that there is a real commitment among nations to a two-station solution,” she said.
Trump told a crowd during a “Believers and Ballots” town hall last week in Zebulon, Georgia, that Netanyahu “called [him] yesterday, called [him] the day before” and that “fortunately they didn’t listen to [President Joe] Biden because … they’d right now be waiting for a bomb to drop on them, and they did their own work.”