Pennsylvania primary provides window into voters’ minds in crucial swing state

Pennsylvanians will head to the polls on Tuesday to cast ballots in the state’s primary races, and the results will provide a window into where voters in the crucial battleground stand roughly six months out from the general election.

Both Joe Biden and Donald Trump have already locked up their parties’ nominations, but Pennsylvania voters will still have other options in the presidential primaries.

In the Republican primary, former UN ambassador Nikki Haley’s name will still appear on the Pennsylvania’s ballot. Although she withdrew from the presidential race last month, Haley has still won some support in the time since, a potentially worrisome sign for Trump’s general election prospects. In Wisconsin’s Republican primary earlier this month, Haley still won 13% of the vote, and a similar performance in another battleground state could serve as a warning shot for Trump.

Biden faces challenges of his own in Pennsylvania, which he won by roughly 80,000 votes, or 1.2 points, in 2020. A group of progressive activists has launched a campaign to encourage Democrats to write in “uncommitted” on Tuesday to protest Biden’s handling of the war in Gaza. The effort, based on the similar Listen to Michigan campaign earlier, hopes to get at least 40,000 Democrats to write in “uncommitted”, but it may take weeks to get those ballots counted.

Both Biden and Trump recently held events in Pennsylvania ahead of the primary, underscoring the state’s pivotal role in the general election. At a campaign stop last week in Scranton, where Biden was born, the president used the setting to contrast his vision for the country’s future with Trump’s.

“When I look at the economy, I don’t see it through the eyes of Mar-a-Lago, I see it through the eyes of