Dem
49
GOP
51
Democrats have a tendency to focus on big urban centers like Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, along with their inner suburbs. That is often it. Kamala Harris is seriously trying something different: She is spending time in smaller cities and even in rural areas. She got the message: 90% of success is just showing up. She has been to Eau Claire, WI; Johnstown, PA; and Savannah, GA, recently, to take a few examples. A vote in a small city or a rural area counts as much as a vote in the big city. When a candidate is in state campaigning, the local media will pick it up, even (or maybe especially) if the candidate is in an out-of-the-way place.
In theory, Democrats have known this for years. When Howard Dean was chairman of the DNC, he had a 50-state strategy. He wanted a viable Democratic Party in all 50 states. Many top Democrats felt that putting money in Idaho or Mississippi was just throwing it down the toilet, but he felt that things can change but they won't if you don't try. Eventually, Dean left the DNC and the Democrats went back to mostly focusing on big cities in blue or swing states. Joe Biden's campaign was all about increasing turnout in big cities. Harris is not following that strategy. She is going after noncollege voters in small cities, exurban locations, and even the rural countryside. She has enough money to advertise everywhere, but she is backing up her commitment by putting her valuable time into nontraditional campaign stops. She believes that when voters hear what she has to say, they will be open to voting for her. But she has to approach them where they are. Biden didn't do this, but of course, Harris is much younger than Biden and has the energy to make many more campaign stops per day than he could, even some after 4 p.m.
In Pennsylvania, both Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) and Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA) successfully used the "lose-by-less strategy" in the Alabama (or Pennsyltucky) part of the state. Harris' Pennsylvania state director, Brendan McPhillips, ran Fetterman's 2022 campaign and well understands the value of "losing by less" in rural counties. In Georgia, Harris is doing the same thing. Her principal deputy campaign manager, Quentin Fulks, who ran the campaign of Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) in 2022, put a lot of focus on rural Georgia in that campaign.
Trump is pooh-poohing Harris' strategy. He claims that rural voters are all his and uses racist and sexist tropes to try to keep them that way. The racist ones might work in all-white areas, but the sexist ones might backfire. Even rural women don't like to hear that women are too stupid to be president. (V)