Inside the ground game in Pennsylvania, the US election's most critical battleground state
Beverly Ronallo and Ron Rometo have been knocking on the doors of "weak Republicans".
It's Sunday afternoon in Penn Township – a quiet, and almost exclusively white, outer suburb of Pittsburgh.
Church has finished for the day, and a group of Republicans is meeting in a car park outside a community bank.
"This is just the most critical election of our lifetime, and we really need president Trump back in office to save our country," says Beverly Ronallo, one of the gathered party faithful.
This group knows America's voting system means their state of Pennsylvania could make or break the election for Trump.
Polls here have been incredibly tight for weeks, but have shifted ever-so-slightly in Trump's favour in the past fortnight.
The FiveThirtyEight polling average for Pennsylvania, calculated off a range of state and national polls, had Kamala Harris slightly ahead of Trump until 10 days ago.
As of Tuesday (local time), it shows Trump ahead, 47.9 per cent to 47.7 per cent.
Some doors in Penn Township don't need to be knocked on.
"We really need a businessman to get in there and straighten out the economy," Beverly says. "Get us back to four or five years ago. When president Trump was in office, everything was so much more affordable."
The Republicans used publicly available voting records to create a database of so-called "weak Republicans" in the area, and they're determined to knock on as many of their doors as possible.
"Usually, their argument is that Donald Trump is mean or Donald Trump tweets mean stuff, and that's pretty much it – that he's not a nice person," Beverly says.
"But I'm not taking him home at night. I mean, I just want my country safe, and my social security to be safe, and to get a balanced budget somehow."
Weak Republicans are defined as those who have supported Republican candidates in some past elections, but failed to vote in others. They're not hard to find – voters' names, addresses, party affiliations and turnout record are all publicly available.
America makes voter information publicly available, so canvassing can be targeted.
And a high turnout of "weak" Republicans could give Trump a win in Pennsylvania, which he won in 2016 by 0.72 per cent, but lost to Joe Biden in 2020 by 1.17 per cent.
'I am truly terrified'
Beverly and Ron aren't travelling far from home in their efforts to get out the vote. It's a different story for Jeanne Mendez.
After she lost her husband 17 years ago, she quit her job at Microsoft, packed her bags, and moved from Seattle to rural Guatemala.
"My husband was only 55 when he died, and it was a real slap across the head to say: 'Wake up, don't waste your life,'" she says.
But now, after some friends chipped in to cover her flights and an Airbnb in Pennsylvania, she's back in the US with a mission.
"I am terrified about the thought of Donald Trump," she says. "Democracy is at stake. I truly believe it."
Jeanne Mendez is volunteering for the Democrats in Pittsburgh.
She's volunteering with the Allegheny County Democrats, at the party's headquarters in an old bank building over the river from downtown Pittsburgh.
Many of her fellow volunteers have flown into Pennsylvania from other parts of the US, because volunteering in their home states would likely be a wasted effort.
That's because almost every state awards all its "electoral college" votes to the presidential candidate who wins that state. The runner-up candidate is awarded no electoral college votes, even if a sizeable share of the state's voters selected them.
Most states reliably vote Republican or Democrat, and are unlikely to flip at this election.
Only seven states have a competitive race: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Wisconsin, and – the largest, with the most votes up for grabs – Pennsylvania.
The Allegheny County Democratic Committee volunteers, in Pittsburgh, operate separately to the Harris-Walz campaign.
Rather than persuading people how to vote, they've been focused on making sure registered Democrats remember to vote, by sending postcards, making phone calls, and encouraging them to vote by mail.
Volunteers at Allegheny County Democrats HQ in Pittsburgh.
"A lot of us are getting people on the phone who applied for mail-in ballots but haven't gotten them," Jeanne says.
"And so we're saying: 'OK, you know what? We have drivers here. We can take you to the polls today'."
Pennsylvania's 'mini blue wall'
Pennsylvania is part of the so-called "blue wall", as well as fellow swing states Michigan and Wisconsin.
Winning the "blue wall", as Biden did in 2020, is widely seen as the most likely path to victory for Harris.
"If Harris wins the three blue wall states, she probably (although not certainly) wins," prominent pollster and political forecaster Nate Silver wrote at the weekend.
And, according to NBC News, a Harris campaign memo has identified Pennsylvania's suburbs as "our own mini 'blue wall'".
"The Harris campaign's path to win Pennsylvania capitalises on Trump's unprecedented weakness in the suburbs," the memo says.
Like the Republicans, Democrats are focusing their eleventh-hour canvassing efforts on visiting the homes of people on their own team. But some, like Debbie Turici, were knocking on Republicans' doors until recently.
Debbie Turici (left) speaks to a voter in Findlay Township, a suburb in Pittsburgh.
She says she's encountered a few who have switched their support to the Democrats since Trump's ascent in the party. One registered Republican even handed her a hundred-dollar note when she was running for office herself, in a state race two years ago.
"I can't bear to think about him [Trump] winning again," she says.
The retired art teacher was motivated to become more politically active, in part, by mass shooting in American schools.
"As a teacher, you know, it was fire drills – then all of a sudden, we're doing active shooting drills," she says.
"And when Sandy Hook happened, I was just devastated – cried like a baby. And now, we've become so immune to it."
Trump's 'victory centre'
It's not just Democrats encountering Republicans who are switching sides.
Valerie Frick is helping to run a "GOP Victory Centre" in Murrysville – a community of 20,000 in the rolling hills east of Pittsburgh.
The highway shopfront was set up by local Republicans to help get local Trump supporters signed up to vote.
"It's not unusual to have 20 people a day come in and want to check their registration, or register," says Valerie.
Valerie Frick says she's personally helped seven Democrats switch sides.
"We've also had people that have changed from Democrats to Republicans, and then we honour them and clap and take their picture, and we give them a little flag."
Valerie says she's personally helped seven visitors switch their party registration. Fellow volunteers have helped others.
"Mostly it's the economy – they'd like to see prices go down the way they were with Donald Trump in office," she says. "A lot of it is the right to life too – even women coming in and using that for a reason."
It's also selling Trump merchandise to raise cash for the party.
Trump merchandise is for sale at the GOP Victory Centre in Murrysville.
When the ABC visits the victory centre, a local woman and her daughter-in-law also stop in.
"I've driven past a bunch of times and just wanted to come in and buy something," the younger woman says.
She lives on a street that some of her neighbour calls "Liberal Lane", because of the number of Harris-Walz yard signs.
She's decided against yard signs. "When you say you're for Trump, everyone looks down on you," her mother-in-law says. Instead, she buys a stubby holder and some wristbands.
"Just something little," she says. "And something we can also pack away. Because this election is going to be real big."
By：ABC(责任编辑：admin)
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