Ground Game: Blurred party lines, swing state Republicans, candidates’ Christianity

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Plus, pro-Trump door-knockers are hard to find in swing states, and AP-NORC poll findings about voters’ views of candidates’ Christianity{beacon}

By Meg Kinnard

September 23, 2024 03:39:14 PM

By Meg Kinnard

September 23, 2024 03:39:14 PM

  

One presidential candidate is talking up gun ownership and promising tough border security measures. The other vows to cap credit card interest rates and force insurance companies to cover in vitro fertilization. Which one is the Democrat and the Republican?

Welcome to this week’s edition of AP Ground Game.

 

THE HEADLINES

Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris joins Oprah Winfrey at Oprah's Unite for America Live Streaming event Thursday, Sept. 19, 2024 in Farmington Hills, Mich. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)

Party lines blur in campaign's last stretch

The lines that have long defined each party's policy priorities are blurring as Kamala Harris and Donald Trump seek to expand their coalition in the final weeks of a fiercely competitive election. The contest may well hinge on how many disaffected suburban Republicans vote for Harris and how much of the Democrats’ traditional base — African Americans, Latinos, young people and labor union members — migrates to Trump.

That's prompting both candidates to take stances that would have once been anathema to their bases, scrambling longtime assumptions about what each party stands for.

Trump has been testing the loyalty of social and small-government conservatives with an agenda that downplays his opposition to abortion and calls for significant government intervention in health care and