President Donald Trump Bringing Reelection Campaign To Pennsylvania For First Time This Year
HARRISBURG, Pa. (CBS/AP) — President Donald Trump is bringing his reelection campaign to Pennsylvania on Thursday in his first visit this year to the battleground state. Trump will be in Scranton for a town hall-style event hosted by Fox News.
The one-hour event will be at the Scranton Cultural Center.
The location is important for this year's presidential election: Trump's unexpected win in Pennsylvania in 2016 helped pave his way to the White House. He did particularly well in northeastern Pennsylvania, where the cities of Scranton and Wilkes-Barre have long anchored a strong Democratic presence in the area.
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden grew up in Scranton, which is a stronghold for him.
The Republican president made five visits to Pennsylvania last year, including two to western Pennsylvania where he talked up the region's booming natural gas industry.
Pennsylvania is again expected to be a premier battleground state in November's general election as Democrats vie to bring it back into the win column. No Democrat since Harry S. Truman in 1948 has become president without winning the state.
Trump won Pennsylvania in 2016 by about 44,000 votes, or less than 1 percentage point.
In backing Trump, Pennsylvania went Republican in a presidential contest for the first time since 1988 as part of the Democratic Party's "blue wall" of industrial states that Trump flipped, along with Michigan and Wisconsin.
The Pennsylvania primary is April 28.
(© Copyright 2020 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
