PENNSYLVANIA, USA — The campaigns of both Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are fighting for every vote in Pennsylvania, including in areas where voters themselves are few and far between.
Both campaigns are making a concerted effort to reach rural voters in a race that could be decided by the slimmest of margins.
The Harris campaign opened an office this year in Ephrata, Lancaster County, which has the largest gross disparity between registered Republicans and Democrats in Pennsylvania.
The office is one of sixteen coordinated campaign offices for Harris in predominantly rural counties that Trump won by double-digits in 2020.
"I'm so fortunate to live in this area where we have rural people that are committed to similar values that I have," said John Williamson, a district leader for the Ephrata area Democrat committee. "This past weekend, we had over 1,600 doors that volunteers knocked on in the Ephrata area. We're reaching out to especially the Democrats, and making sure that they're going to come out and vote."
Trump carried Ephrata by 24 percentage points in 2020, and Republicans have long held an advantage amongst rural voters in Pennsylvania.
"Both campaigns know the importance of Pennsylvania, but particularly the Trump campaign understands the necessity," said 11th District U.S. Congressman Lloyd Smucker (R-Lancaster). "We're meeting with voters all across the district on a regular basis to talk about the importance of of getting out to vote. And then reaching out to them through mail, through texting, through phone calls, multiple ways that we reach out to them on a regular basis."
The outreach to rural voters includes the Amish communities, of which more than 40,000 live in Smucker's district. Around 3,000 Amish voted in the 2020 election out of roughly 20,000 eligible voters.
"We reach out to them through meetings, fire halls or at other locations close to the Amish communities here," Smucker said. "We also reach out to them through mailers and have had good success. I would say that the Amish community is gradually becoming more and more engaged each election cycle."
Both campaigns believe their message is resonating with rural voters.
"When you start asking them questions about what they want to see, as far as the character of a president, I think it's very clear that their values line up much closely with Kamala Harris," Williamson said.
"They just want to be left alone by government generally," Smucker said. "And so as they see growth in the federal government, they see increasing regulation from the federal government. They see it impacting them."