Harris Visits Red Areas of Pennsylvania, Hoping to Cut Into Trump’s Edge

Vice President Kamala Harris is campaigning through Pennsylvania’s conservative interior on Friday, aiming to shave a few percentage points off former President Donald J. Trump’s winning margins in parts of the state where he remains popular.

She stopped first in Johnstown alongside Senator John Fetterman, a Democrat who for months has urged first President Biden’s campaign and now Ms. Harris’s to spend time with Pennsylvania voters outside the Philadelphia and Pittsburgh regions, which are both heavily Democratic.

In Johnstown, Ms. Harris told voters at a cafe and bookstore that she was “feeling very good about Pennsylvania because there are a lot of people in Pennsylvania who deserve to be seen and heard.” She added, “That’s why I’m here in Johnstown.”

Her campaign has made clear how much it values winning Pennsylvania, which with 19 electoral votes is the most valuable battleground state. Ms. Harris has spent six of the last seven days making public appearances in Pennsylvania, and later Friday she is scheduled to make her second of the day, at an evening rally in Wilkes-Barre. Her campaign has devoted nearly 25 percent of its television ad spending through Election Day to Pennsylvania, according to the media-tracking firm AdImpact. Mr. Trump’s likeliest path to victory involves flipping Pennsylvania, which Mr. Biden narrowly won in 2020.

Harris campaign aides have said that she must win over some swing voters in red counties, thus lowering her margin of defeat, in order to claim the state. While Ms. Harris was in red territory in Pennsylvania on Friday, Mr. Trump held a news conference in deep-blue California, a state he lost in 2020 by more than five million votes and was certain to lose again.