With 19 electoral votes up for grabs, Pennsylvania has emerged as one of the key battleground states people are monitoring that could ultimately decide the 2024 presidential election.
For months, the Quaker State has been viewed as a must-win to secure the presidency, resulting in countless campaign rallies and millions of dollars being spent on political advertisements in the state. But voters that Scripps News spoke to said they were embracing the national spotlight.
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"I just think it's a really cool thing that we are going to be the deciding state," said Cynthia Wilson. "We're going to be like, out there in the public eye and everybody is going to be watching us."
Howard Bose, another Pennsylvania voter Scripps News spoke with, used just one word to describe how he's felt leading up to Election Day.
"Pressure," he said. "You know, your state is the turning point of the whole country. No matter what they're feeling, you're the deciding vote."
Voter Brad Schenk echoed that sentiment, but also expressed some concerns.
"I think it's pretty awesome," he said about the attention Pennsylvania has received this election cycle. "I just think a lot of people are focusing on the wrong issues."
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Pennsylvania has seen very tight polling margins in the last two election cycles. In 2016, former President Donald Trump won the state by roughly 50,000 votes. And in the 2020 election, President Joe Biden won the state by about 80,000 votes.
Both Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris have spent a lot of time and resources courting voters in Pennsylvania. However, there still may not be a clear winner on election night.
Unlike other states, where they start counting early and absentee ballots as they come in, Pennsylvania law says ballots cannot be counted until election day. That can potentially involve millions of ballots needing to be counted, while simultaneously running 9,000 polling places across the state on Election Day.
