Donald Trump Says Kamala Harris Just ‘Lost’ Pennsylvania, What Polls Say

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump posted that Vice President Kamala Harris had “lost Pennsylvania” due to her past position on fracking, but the polls show a much tighter race.
The former president posted a link to a Fox News article on his Truth Social account titled “Unearthed video reiterates Harris’ previous support for fracking ban,” which he captioned “Comrade Kamala just LOST Pennsylvania.”
Fracking, also known as hydraulic fracturing, is a method used to extract oil and natural gas from deep underground rock formations. It is a major industry in Pennsylvania. Fracking is a controversial practice due to its impacts on the environment and the potential hazards posed to human health by the chemicals used in the water mixture.
The article Trump posted describes a five-year-old video in which Harris says that she wants “to put and end to fracking once and for all” during her 2019 campaign for president.
However, the clip has already been heavily circulated during this election campaign and she has reversed her position since becoming the Democratic nominee.
In her August CNN interview with Dana Bash, Harris defended that reversal, saying that so much progress has been made in the transition toward green energy that a fracking ban won’t be necessary.
“My values have not changed. I believe it is very important that we take seriously what we must do to guard against what is a clear crisis in terms of the climate,” she said.
She added: “And to do that, we can do what we have accomplished thus far. The Inflation Reduction Act. What we have done to invest, by my calculation, probably a trillion dollars over the next few years, investing in a clean energy economy. What we’ve already done creating over 300,000 new clean energy jobs. That tells me, from my experience as vice president, we can do it without banning fracking.”
And it seems that Harris’ message might be getting through, because Trump’s claim that the vice president still wants to ban fracking, and will therefore lose Pennsylvania, is not reflected in the latest polling.
Harris currently leads Trump by 1.4 points in Pennsylvania (48.3 to 46.8 percent), according to poll aggregator FiveThirtyEight. Meanwhile, polling analyst Nate Silver said on Saturday that the vice president has a 57 percent chance of winning the state.
Trump won Pennsylvania in 2016 while Biden won it in 2020. Carrying 19 Electoral College votes, the Keystone State is one of the most important states to win in the race to the White House.
Of the six other major swing states (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Wisconsin), FiveThirtyEight has Harris ahead in Michigan (48.6 to 45.9, 2.7 points) and Wisconsin (48.5 to 46.6, 1.9 points) by more than one point, while the other four states have the candidates less than a point apart.
If Harris wins Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, where she currently leads in all three by more than a point, and Trump wins the remaining swing states, she will have enough votes to win the Electoral College and the White House.
Those three states have voted the same way as each other in every election since 1988, where Wisconsin voted for Michael Dukakis, while Michigan and Pennsylvania voted for George H.W. Bush.
Newsweek has contacted the campaigns of Trump and Harris for comment.