Harris and Walz Venture Into Less-Friendly Terrain to Court Pennsylvania Voters

Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, embarked on an afternoon bus tour of western Pennsylvania on Sunday afternoon, a brief trip on the eve of the Democratic convention that signaled the ticket’s play for voters in perhaps the most crucial battleground state in the 2024 election.

The push was apparent at the team’s first stop, a field office in Rochester, Pa., in the largely conservative Beaver County: Ms. Harris picked up a volunteer’s cellphone to speak with a resident from Erie, a northwestern city in one of the state’s swingiest counties, which Hillary Clinton lost in 2016 but Joseph R. Biden Jr. won four years later.

“I love Erie,” Ms. Harris said. “At some point we’ll get to Erie.”

Ms. Harris and Mr. Walz were joined on the outing by their spouses, Doug Emhoff and Gwen Walz, traveling in two new campaign buses from the Pittsburgh airport, where they arrived on Air Force Two to greet a small group of supporters.

The Pittsburgh and Philadelphia areas are the two main drivers of Democratic support in Pennsylvania, a state whose 19 electoral votes could decide the presidency. Recent polling shows a neck-and-neck race there between Ms. Harris and former President Donald J. Trump, with some surveys showing Ms. Harris gaining a narrow edge recently.

Mr. Trump is also increasing his presence in Pennsylvania — on Saturday he held a rally in Wilkes-Barre and another is set in York on Monday, while Senator JD Vance of Ohio, his running mate, campaigns in Philadelphia.