Donald Trump boosts efforts to make inroads in must-win Pennsylvania

Donald Trump redoubled efforts to make inroads in Democratic strongholds in must-win Pennsylvania in recent weeks with frequent visits and a robust TV ad campaign, as he seized the momentum from Hillary Clinton in the presidential race.

After experiencing a dip in the polls last month, the Republican presidential nominee has enjoyed burgeoning support in usually loyal Democratic areas in the state’s southwest around Pittsburgh and northeast around Scranton.

Voters in those communities long buffeted by economic decline are giving the brash New York billionaire’s get-tough message on trade, immigration and the economy a second look and giving the Trump campaign new confidence about turning Pennsylvania red for the first time since 1988.

“It is very exciting here,” said Trump volunteer Ellen Sartori, 70, a semi-retired nurse living near Scranton. “There are a number of people in this Democratic county who are very excited and working to get Trump in.”

Unlike other battleground states where the Republican presidential nominee burst into the lead in recent polls, he has only managed to climb to within striking distance of Mrs. Clinton in the Keystone State, which is the lynchpin of Mr. Trump’s strategy to carve a path through the Rust Belt to the White House.

He is attempting to build on a base of blue-collar voters, many of them union members and registered Democrats, to swing states such as Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin into the Republican column.

Mr. Trump made campaign stops in the last week in Philadelphia and its suburbs in Delaware County, where he needs to improve his standing with college educated white voters to peel off support from Mrs. Clinton.

His running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, has made regular trips to the state, including a campaign stop Wednesday in Scranton.

The Trump campaign also has sustained a TV ad blitz across the state, while the top pro-Clinton super PAC pulled its ads off the air in Pennsylvanian and other battleground states last month when Mrs. Clinton held a commanding lead in the polls.

Mr. Trump cut Mrs. Clinton’s lead in Pennsylvania to 5 points, 44 percent to 39 percent, in a Quinnipiac University poll last week. The survey also included the two other candidates on the ballot, Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson at 9 percent and Green Party nominee Jill Stein at 3 percent.

Mrs. Clinton had a 9-point advantage over Mr. Trump in the same poll a month earlier, with Mr. Johnson at 7 percent and Ms. Stein at 3 percent.

The Clinton campaign responded with its own focus on the state, sending President Obama to stump in Philadelphia this week while Mrs. Clinton was recuperating from a bout of pneumonia.

Mrs. Clinton scheduled a campaign stop Monday in Philadelphia as she gets back into the race full swing.

“Pennsylvania is much closer in 2016 than it has been in recent elections,” said Charlie Gerow, a Republican strategist based in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

He warned the race was “pretty fluid” and that Mr. Trump still had a tough road ahead in a states where Democrats have a registration advantage topping 900,000 voters.

“Trump has to cut into those. He has to address his problem with college educated whites, a voting demographic that no Republican candidate for president has ever lost,” he said. “I don’t know that he can lose that segment of the electorate and win in Pennsylvania or elsewhere. That’s where he’s got to focus his campaign for the next 50 days.”

One of the biggest impediments to Mr. Trump’s run remains his campaign’s lack of a large ground operation, which according to some GOP insiders is more lacking in Pennsylvania than in other battleground states such as Ohio.

Mr. Trump is relying of the state party and the Republican National Committee to put its ground game to work for him.

Meanwhile, the Mrs. Clinton rebuilding the powerful ground operation that President Obama used to drive up Democratic registration and push voters to the polls across the state, delivering decisive wins over John McCain in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012.

“She is trying to recreate the Obama turnout machine. But will she have the same momentum and juice, I don’t know,” said GOP strategist Ryan Shafik, who counsels conservative and anti-establishment candidates in Pennsylvania.

“Hillay’s bad week and the fact that Trump is definitely performing better than Romney and McCain in certain pockets of the state that’s why the numbers have tightened,” he said. “Trump’s over performance compared to other Republicans in northeastern Pennsylvania and southwestern Pennsylvania is keeping him in the ballgame.”