Kamala Harris's campaign targets red states and rural regions to turn Trump voters

With the US presidential election just weeks away, Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris has decided to target red states and rural regions. The strategy? To narrow the already narrow margins for her opponent, the former president, Donald Trump.

CNN reported that Harris is looking to target regions and counties where Trump does not have overwhelming winning margins. That would explain her presence in Ripon, Wisconsin on Thursday.

“We got to turn out folks, obviously, in base Democratic areas, but we also need to persuade a lot of people,” said Harris campaign battleground states director Dan Kanninen. “Shaving margins where you can, in counties that maybe Trump won 70-30, but if we can lose them 60-40 or 65-35, that makes a big difference over dozens of counties in a state.”

The plan is to target regions where there might be fewer Democrats but more dissatisfied Republican voters. To achieve that goal, Harris’s team is planning to host numerous events to appeal to voters not overly in favour of Trump. The events are expected to happen in critical states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina and Wisconsin.

It’s a tactic Harris’s campaign has deployed wherever possible to win credibility with the other side, flaunting Republican endorsements and support. The latest example was Harris campaigning with former Republican Liz Cheney.

But of more significance was perhaps where they chose to make their appearance — Ripon, the birthplace of the Republican Party. Fond du Lac County, which includes Ripon, voted 62%-36% in favour of Trump in the 2020 presidential elections.

"I was a Republican even before Donald Trump started spray tanning," Cheney joked at the event in Wisconsin. "I am proudly casting my vote for Vice President Kamala Harris," Cheney said, her first vote ever for a Democrat.

In addition to the planned events, Harris’ campaign is willing to bank on their campaign facilities and capital and hope they will help swing the election their way. This includes multiple field offices, which allows multiple stops for Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz, when on the road.

“We have 16 offices in counties that Trump won by double digits because we’re not taking any place for granted,” Harris campaign senior adviser for Pennsylvania, Brendan McPhillips, told CNN. “If you win five votes, five extra votes in a county that Trump won by double digits, it’s the same as the five votes you win in Philadelphia,” he added. “But you have to go everywhere to get them, and it matters to people that you show up to their community, and you engage in an honest conversation and a back and forth.”

The areas McPhillips alluded to are places like Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, where former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley had a 20% rating in the Republican primary despite no longer being in the 2024 race, CNN reported. Political strategists have also argued that the Harris campaign, if it plays its cards right, can potentially pick up Republican voters who have not fallen for Trump’s unrelenting charm.

Sam Chen, a Republican political strategist, noted that Harris will most likely not be able to win all of Haley's voters but targeting them and getting even a few to switch could prove significant to narrowing the margin.

“This is a smart move, but it’s a risky move if they don’t like you and if it accidentally drives them to Trump,” Chen said. “This is where you have to know your message.”

Harris’s running mate, Tim Walz, also previously campaigned in Lancaster County, and is now off on a bus tour of central Pennsylvania after the vice presidential debate this week. Keeping with the plan, last month Harris returned to two counties — Cambria and Luzerne — that Trump won by double digits in the 2020 presidential elections.

Harris’s campaign has also been running ads targetting key battleground state voters. One of these ads featured lifelong Republicans who had previously voted for Trump but now say they are going with Harris. Another ad features a Wisconsin farmer talking about the country’s health care.

Whether the attempts to sway these critical votes play out as she hopes, only time will tell, of which not a lot is left, with the US presidential elections just around the corner.