To turn out Pa. voters this weekend, Harris and Trump are using very different tactics

It’s time to close the deal.

With Election Day just four days away, Pennsylvania has become a focal point of the nation and an epicenter of activity for both presidential campaigns as they try to squeeze every last vote out of the Keystone State, which could deliver the White House.

Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, who have already traveled to Pennsylvania more than 50 times combined this campaign cycle, will each make stops here again before Election Day. And across the commonwealth, top surrogates will host events, glad-hand with voters, and pump up campaign volunteers.

It all underscores the degree to which Pennsylvania has become perhaps the most crucial battleground in America and the state that could determine the president. But while both sides are intensely focused here, they’re using dramatically different tactics in the final hours before Election Day.

Harris’ campaign and its allied groups — including labor unions and progressive political organizations — are using conventional tactics like massive door-knocking and phone-calling operations to ensure their supporters become actual voters.

Top surrogates like first lady Jill Biden, former President Bill Clinton, and former first lady Michelle Obama will speak to voters in the state this weekend. Harris herself will stop at get-out-the-vote events in Allentown and Pittsburgh Monday, then cap her campaign on election eve in Philadelphia, where she’ll host a major event and concert in front of the iconic Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Trump will also campaign in Pennsylvania before Election Day — he’s scheduled to hold a rally in Lancaster County Sunday, then will host two more, in Reading and Pittsburgh, on Monday.

But his campaign is taking a different approach to get-out-the-vote. The former president’s campaign is reportedly targeting a small number of voters who don’t frequently cast ballots, and it is relying in part on disjointed, inexperienced outside groups, like a super PAC run by billionaire Elon Musk, to motivate voters in the final stretch.

Trump’s campaign has also focused much of its attention on “election integrity,” gathering an army of lawyers and volunteers to watch polling places on Election Day, challenge voters they suspect of engaging in fraud, and filing a litany of lawsuits.

That effort is also likely to be centered in Pennsylvania, which has already become the epicenter of Trump’s election-fraud claims. Over the last week, he’s made false claims about voter registration collection and proclaimed “they’ve already started cheating” in the state.

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Some of Trump top surrogates who in 2020 advanced conspiracy theories and false claims about the election will be campaigning for him in Pennsylvania this weekend as part of a bus tour traversing the state. Among them are Peter Navarro, a Trump administration economist who went to prison this year for refusing to comply with congressional subpoenas for documents and testimony related to the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.

Pam Bondi, the former attorney general of Florida, will also attend. Bondi falsely claimed in the days after the 2020 election that Trump had won Pennsylvania, and appeared outside the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia where ballots were being tallied and demanded the count be halted.

The bus tour will also feature three lawmakers who voted in 2020 to sustain objections to the election results: Rep. Ronny Jackson (R., Texas), Rep. Byron Donalds (R., Florida), and Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R., Miss.).

In addition to the Harris campaign’s own expansive field operation, dozens of outside groups are also working through the weekend to get-out-the-vote.

One coalition of independent, Democratic-aligned organizations plans to knock on more than 2.5 million doors across 27 counties before Election Day. (There are about 9 million registered voters in Pennsylvania.) The group includes progressive organizations like the Working Families Party and For Our Future PA, as well as labor unions like the Service Employees International Union and Unite Here, which represents hospitality workers.

The nation’s top labor leaders are also campaigning for Harris in the region.

They include the presidents of the national unions that represent teachers, government workers, and service workers, as well as Liz Shuler, the president of AFL-CIO, the groups’ massive umbrella union. They’ll gather in West Philadelphia Saturday morning along with 600 door-knockers, then rally in South Philadelphia Saturday evening.

Jimmy Williams Jr., president of the national union that represents painters, will also be in Philadelphia to campaign for Harris Saturday, capping a nationwide get-out-the-vote bus tour here.

Inquirer staff writer Julia Terruso contributed to this article.