What's the ultimate swing state thinking?

Impressions from Pennsylvania voters as Harris launched her campaign.

Colleagues and I spent two days in Western Pennsylvania this week knocking on doors, approaching people in parks or parking lots, and questioning anybody who would give us time. We played many of the interviews on NPR, and my favorite story is at a link below.

I’ve knocked on doors at election time for twenty years. It’s never uninteresting if you like people. It does take fortitude, moving around with no appointments like a door to door salesman. Sometimes it’s hard to get people to talk: some distrust the media, and others are understandably afraid of speaking out in our divided climate. In western Pennsylvania this time it was especially challenging. Many people said no: It’s a divided state, and the assassination attempt on Donald Trump had taken place in the area hardly more than a week earlier.

Even so, many voters are happy that someone is interested in what they think. About twenty people stopped what they were doing, answered every question, and even invited us into their homes. We also learned a lot just from walking and driving around—and I was able to combine what I learned with knowledge from prior visits, and from dozens of interviews by colleagues in other states.

All this is not enough for a poll but is enough for impressions. Here are a few that I gained in the days that Kamala Harris was rising as the likely Democratic nominee: