What's on the minds of Pennsylvania voters?
The Keystone state, with its 19 electoral votes, is playing an outsized role this election. The vote was close in 2020 and it's expected to be another nail-biting finish again this year. Polls show Vice President Harris and former President Donald Trump locked in a tight race. Two teams of Morning Edition journalists took road trips through the state to hear what voters had to say.
Near Pittsburgh, we met Ben Wallace, who works in the fracking industry and backs Trump, believing he would be friendlier to this line of work.
But he also backs Trump over what he believes are core American ideals: "The right of self-determination, the right to be a Christian nation, the right to determine your own outcome, the right to be free of government interference.”
On the other end of the state, we met Yasmine Hamou, who works doing voter outreach for the Working Families Party in Philadelphia. Hamou knocked doors as a child with her mother for former President Barack Obama. She told us seeing Harris' rise in politics and being on the brink of history is inspiring to her.
“I know how difficult it is when you speak up in the workplace. You have to work 10 times as hard to get half the result as your white peers,” Hamou said. “When I was voting for her, I got a little emotional because I couldn’t believe I was seeing her name.”
You can read what other voters we met on our trip had to say ahead of the election right here.
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