Former President Barack Obama is planning to hit the campaign trail on behalf of Vice President Kamala Harris in several swing states as she continues to lose ground to former President Donald Trump.
The former president is scheduled to appear Thursday at an event in the Pittsburgh area, marking the beginning of a swing-state “blitz” leading up to Election Day, according to a senior campaign official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the schedule prior to its announcement.
Obama’s involvement was expected following his enthusiastic remarks about her at this summer’s Democratic National Convention, Politico reported, adding that Harris was among the first to endorse him during his first White House bid in 2008.
“Kamala Harris is ready for the job,” he said. “This is a person who has spent her life fighting on behalf of people who need a voice and a champion. Kamala wasn’t born into privilege. She had to work for what she’s got, and she actually cares about what other people are going through.”
Obama is among a lineup of high-profile politicians and celebrities campaigning for Harris. As Harris hit the campaign trail Thursday alongside former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney, her team announced that actress Jennifer Garner would be joining her in Arizona. Last month, Oprah Winfrey, Chris Rock, Ben Stiller, and other celebrities showed their support for Harris during a live-streamed town hall event.
“Harris and Obama have known each other since 2004, when they met on the campaign trail as he ran for Senate and she was still district attorney in San Francisco,” the outlet reported.
Obama hits the trail for Harris at a time when it has become clear her so-called “honeymoon period” — the weeks of favorable polling following her anointment to the top of the Democratic ticket by President Joe Biden — has clearly ended.
CNN senior data reporter Harry Enten noted on late last month that Trump is performing better in swing states compared to the 2020 election.
According to a New York Times/Siena College poll, Trump led Harris by 5 points in Arizona and has a 4-point lead in Georgia and a 3-point lead in North Carolina.
Enten highlighted that these figures are “significantly better” than Trump’s polling performance in 2020, signaling a positive trend for the former president.
“You’ve got a lot of red on this screen, this is pretty good news for Donald Trump … You take it all together in these three key battleground states, two of which [President] Joe Biden carried 4 years ago, we see that Donald Trump is ahead and by an average of 4 points, significantly better than he did back in 2020 across all of these states,” Enten noted.
Enten also pointed to Harris’ then-narrow 2-point leads in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, emphasizing a significant divide between the Sun Belt and Great Lakes states. He attributed Trump’s stronger performance in the Sun Belt to his coalition becoming more racially diverse, noting an increase in his support among non-white voters from 16% in 2020 to 20% in 2024.
“If you know anything about those Sun Belt battleground states, it’s that they are more diverse than those Great Lake battleground states,” Enten said. “In the Southwest, they’re more Hispanic than they are nationwide, in the South, Southeast, North Carolina and Georgia, they are more African American than they are nationwide.
“And I think the real question here is, what does this mean for the electoral map because that’s what we’re all interested in and look folks, it’s just as tight as it can possibly be,” he added.
Enten presented an electoral map indicating that Harris would win 276 to 262 if polling in the Great Lakes states holds true. Given Trump’s history of outperforming swing state polls in 2016 and 2020, he is expected to perform better in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan than the current polls suggest.
