Opinion | Will Harris or Trump Win Pennsylvania? 12 Swing-State Voters Discuss.

No state is more coveted by Donald Trump and Kamala Harris than Pennsylvania, since their best strategies for an Electoral College victory hinge on winning it. With polls showing a tied race there, we spoke with 12 Pennsylvanians for our new Times Opinion focus group: voters who supported Joe Biden or Mr. Trump in 2020 and are not hard-core partisans.

While the group leaned toward Ms. Harris, her support was pretty soft. Few of the participants could articulate a strong argument to vote for her on her merits. They are eager for a candidate to rally behind, given their worries about the country, especially the economy, but they haven’t heard enough specifics from her about how she would lower costs.

“It feels like ‘break my arm or break my leg,’” George, a 63-year-old 2020 Biden voter, said of his choices. He was open to considering Mr. Trump but added, “I just can’t fathom voting for a felon who says on Day 1 that he’s going to be a dictator and has a list of 5,000 people who are going to be replaced in the government. At the same time, I see how liberal she was and how she has flip-flopped. You want to talk about fracking in Pennsylvania? We’re all from fracking.”

Those who liked Mr. Trump saw him as a businessman, while those who leaned against him thought of him as a child. That suggests that the Harris team may be onto something by making him seem small rather than a big threat. Ms. Harris is viewed as fairly unknown and untested. “I don’t feel like I’ve seen Harris throughout Biden’s presidency. So she’s just OK,” said Lania, a 34-year-old 2020 Biden voter. Kay, a 61-year-old Biden voter, said Ms. Harris “was almost nonexistent in the last four years.”

The risk to Ms. Harris is that voters like Lania and Kay won’t be committed voters by Election Day, while the risk to Mr. Trump is that his history puts him beyond the pale, as George indicated. The economy and, to some degree, abortion look like the driving issues in Pennsylvania, and Mr. Trump had the edge in our group on economic issues, while Ms. Harris was way ahead on reproductive rights.