Election Day 2024 Live

Battleground: Pennsylvanians feel the pressure, privilege of voting in the swing state

It’s been a long year for Pennsylvania voters, with intense scrutiny by national media and relentless campaign ads and near-constant visits and rallies from the candidates. The battleground state with 19 electoral votes that both campaigns view as key to winning the White House, Pennsylvania voters are keenly aware of the responsibility they carry into Election Day 2024.

We asked a cross section of Pennsylvania voters for their thoughts. Here’s what they told us.

Bruce Hoechner, 64, a retired CEO who lives in Lower Makefield, said he feels “uncomfortable” with the idea that the race is as close as it appears to be and the possibility that Pennsylvania could choose the next president. 

“It seems to me, when you look at the track record of both candidates and the dysfunction of Trump, it’s astonishing that half the people in the United States would consider him fit to be president of the United States,” he said. 

“I wish Kamala good luck.”

Hoechner said he went to the Lower Bucks Government Services Center on Monday because he requested a mail ballot more than two weeks ago and it never came. So he went to get that sorted out.

James Mullane, a 23-year-old college student who lives in Middletown, said he’s concerned and annoyed by the misinformation he’s seen online and on TV.

He noted that a lot of people seemed to be confused about getting mail ballots on demand, thinking it was early voting.

“We technically don’t have early voting,” he said. 

But he still saw people calling on-demand mail ballots “early voting.”

“No one’s really learned anything about how our state works,” he said.  His philosophy about elections: “Vote for a name, not a party.”

Pamela Fox, 72, manager of a nonprofit who lives in Wrightstown, said she’s “very, very nervous and scared” about the election and Pennsylvania’s place in deciding the winner.

“I’m afraid that there are too many people in the center of the state who support Trump, and I just think he’s abhorrent,” she said.

“He’s a convicted felon. He’s a liar. He promotes violence. It’s like he’s a leader of a cult. And I just think it would be very dangerous, especially since he’s aligned with Elon Musk and some of the other billionaires in this country. I think it would be very bad for our democracy.”

Lisa Williams, a 59-year-old homemaker who lives in Middletown, said she’s “a little nervous” about the election.

“I’m a little nervous about what happens if Trump wins, and a little nervous about what happens if he loses,” she said.

She’s especially worried about “how many angry people there might be” if Trump loses, she said. Williams decided to drop off her mail ballot on Monday rather than last week or going to the polls on Tuesday because she doesn’t like crowds.

Jill Petalillo, 58, a Republican from Upper Makefield, said she doesn’t feel great about the election coming down to Pennsylvania.

“It just seems like there’s been a lot of issues at different polling places,” she said. “I don’t know why we don’t have it figured out. You know, the lines last week were crazy. The last couple of weeks, you had polling places closing early. So you wonder if it’s intentional or if it’s just that they didn’t hire enough volunteers.”

Given all the confusion around mail ballots and Pennsylvania being “very unpredictable,” Petalillo said, “it’s a little unnerving that it comes down to PA. That’s why it’s so important to get out and vote.”

Philadelphia native Greg Ahlswede has lived in Scranton for five years. The election has been “exhausted and exhausting,” he said. “The constant mailers, the constant texts, the constant calls. It goes into your subconscious, all of it, all of the time.”

Ahlswede was at the Scranton Cultural Center on Oct. 25 to see Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz. 

He  pointed out that people could be concentrating on other aspects of their lives: their jobs, social lives and more.

“It’s really easy to get sucked into a wormhole of news and social media,” he said.

One of the speakers before Walz took the stage that day was Scranton Mayor Page Cognetti, who also addressed the stress of the election.

“There’s hand-wringing, oh there’s hand-wringing,” she said. “Use those hands to knock on doors.”

On the other hand…

Not everyone, however, sees Pennsylvania’s battleground status as a bad thing.

Jessica Reed, 41, of Pittsburgh said she was feeling “nauseously optimistic” at a rally for Harris on election day eve. She said she mostly watches streaming television so “bubbled herself out” of much of the constant political ads on broadcast and cable TV. “I notice it when I go to my parents’ who don’t have streaming TV, the commercials are just nonstop,” she said. “But it’s good to be important, it feels nice.”

Bridget Lavin, 28,  moved to Pittsburgh about two years ago, she said, so 2024 is the first year she’s experienced a presidential election in Pennsylvania.

“I am so excited to feel like my vote is going to make a difference,” Lavin said. She said she uses ad blockers online and also watches streaming TV so hasn’t been hit with the onslaught of political ads. “But this Saturday when I watched SNL live because Harris was on, and I was getting ad after ad after ad,” she said. “And I was like is this what its like living in Pennsylvania and actually watching TV?”

Susie Guisco of Erie, considered a bellwether for the rest of the state, said at a rally with Bernie Sanders she and her husband, Conrad Kubaney 32, take their swing state status seriously. After the first debate between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, where Biden performed poorly, they were motivated to get more involved in the political process and started helping.

“It’s too important to be on the sidelines in this election,” she said. “It’s a serious responsibility, but we feel like it really matters.”

Christina Collier, 37, originally from New Jersey but who lives in Glassport now, said she feels the pressure of the battleground status. She’s feeling scared, she said, because she knows Trump has a lot of supporters, and she supports Harris.

“But I know we did the right thing a couple years ago,” she said. “I think we’re going to to do the right thing again.”