Pennsylvania is a key presidential battleground
With Biden and Trump having sewn up their party's nominations, the Pennsylvania presidential primary is an afterthought today. But the Keystone State will definitely be at the forefront of the general election campaign: In 2016, Trump carried it by 0.7 percentage points, and in 2020, Biden won it by 1.2 points, making Pennsylvania one of the most competitive states in the country. And with 19 electoral votes, the state is the largest battleground-state prize in the Electoral College (if you don't include Florida, which has 30 electoral votes but may have a GOP lean now).
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Early polling for the November election confirms the expectation that Pennsylvania will once again feature a hard-fought campaign. 538 hasn't released its general election polling averages yet — they're coming very soon — but Trump and Biden are running close to even in recent polls. The most recent one we have, a mid-April survey from Beacon Research/Shaw & Co. Research/Fox News, found them tied at 48 percent, with Trump edging ahead by 2 points when third-party candidates like Robert Kennedy Jr. were included as options.
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Given Pennsylvania's importance, it's no surprise that both Biden and Trump are heavily focused on it. Biden just completed a campaign swing through the state last week, including a stop at his childhood home of Scranton. Just days earlier, Trump held a campaign rally in the Lehigh Valley ahead of the start of his hush-money trial in New York City. There'll certainly be more of that in Pennsylvania — and a gazillion attack ads on television and digital airwaves — before Election Day.
—Geoffrey Skelley, 538