Why aren’t presidential candidates visiting Centre County? Here’s what political experts said

They've held rallies in and around big Pennsylvania cities like Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. They've visited rural towns like Johnstown and Wilkes-Barre. Both presidential campaigns even recently made stops in nearby Harrisburg.

With Pennsylvania serving as arguably the most important of the battleground states in the 2024 General Election — it holds the most electoral votes with 19 — both campaigns have made the Keystone state a focus. So, given all that, why haven't Kamala Harris or Donald Trump (or their running mates) visited Centre County, the center of central Pennsylvania and the home of Penn State?

Depending who you ask, that's not a simple answer. But, according to three political experts interviewed by the Centre Daily Times, much of the answer boils down to population and location.

Sure, both candidates have visited nearby Cambria County, whose population is nearly 20% less than Centre County. And, yes, Trump recently visited another university — Saginaw Valley State — in the battleground state of Michigan. But there are many variables at play when it comes to rallies and campaign visits, and those variables largely don't appear to work in Centre County's favor.

"What's intriguing to me is that as you look at Centre County, it is a swing county and it's a ticket-splitting county ," said Samuel Chen, a political strategist and principal director of the in-state strategy firm The Liddell Group. "It's a county where you have Republicans and Democrats serving in the county. It's a county you'd would attract visits."

A closer look at demographics

So why the disparity? Well, according to political consultant Mustafa Rashed, president of Pennsylvania-based government relations/strategy firm Bellevue Strategies, that answer comes from looking deeper into Centre County's demographics.

Centre County ranks 20th out of Pennsylvania's 67 counties, in terms of population. But Penn State students comprise more than one-third of the county's estimated 157,795 residents as of 2023. (Compare that makeup to Michigan's Saginaw County — 187,782 — and Saginaw Valley State's enrollment of about 7,000.)

"If I'm an elected official and my most limited and valuable resource is time, if I talk to a college student, I have to convince them to vote for me to register to vote," Rashed said, adding some students might not even be registered to vote in Pennsylvania. "... The candidates are going to go to where they're going to get the best, for lack of a better term, return on investment — and that's going to come from places where they have a better handle on the population."

Chen took it one step further. In other ticket-splitting areas such as the oft-visited Northampton County, most areas there lightly favor one party over another. On the surface, Centre County might appear similar — Democrats make up 41.53% of voters here, while Republicans stand at 40.39% — but the county's precincts tend to skew heavily in one direction: State College and the surrounding precincts are blue, while the others are mostly red.

So, if campaigns are looking closely into Centre County, Chen said, they're not finding more reasons to visit.

"People might see Centre County as a split decision in that you've got red, you've got blue — but those precincts are pretty solid. The county only becomes a swing county because of that," he said. "You add that to the smaller population, to the fact it's in the middle of a sea of red ( from surrounding counties ), and if you're not going to do a college stop, I think that may add up to why people skip it."

Added Daniel Mallinson, an associate professor of Public Policy and Administration at Penn State-Harrisburg: "It's also kind of out in the middle of a very rural part of the state, so my guess is that is probably why" Centre County doesn't see visits from presidential candidates.

Deciding where to visit

When presidential candidates are scouting potential rally locations or campaign stops, the experts said they tend to follow a similar playbook: Raise money by looking for a strong donor base, raise one's national profile and morale early on by going to a historically strong base — and, in the final days of the election, focus on the seven or eight battleground states by choosing places where turnout can be increased or voters flipped.

That last point is likely why both Trump and Harris visited Johnstown, Chen said. The town with a population below 20,000 once was known for being very blue-collar and Democratic until Trump turned it red. Trump held an August rally in a 4,000-seat hockey arena , while Harris recently made a campaign stop at a Johnstown bookstore .

Different campaign stops are for different reasons. Trump might've opted to visit Johnstown to keep it red. Harris' VP pick Tim Walz might've stopped in Lancaster County because 20% of Republicans there voted for Nikki Haley in the Republican primary. Centre County doesn't appear to have as compelling a reason to visit.

Besides the fact it's in a rural area — although, yes, the airport's runway is long enough for Air Force 2 — it's also relatively isolated. Because of that, a visit from Harris would almost certainly have to be of the fly-in, fly-out variety. And, because the area around Centre County is so red, Trump's campaign might see limited value in making additional stops there.

Could a Happy Valley stop help?

All that being said, at least one expert believed the candidates or their VPs would benefit from visiting Happy Valley.

Chen acknowledged he likely wouldn't advise Harris to hold a rally in Centre County but believed the campaign might be best-served to have Walz attend a Penn State football game. "I think that would get a lot of play in the press and could help their national image," he said. As for Trump, Chen believed the former president might be making a mistake by not stopping in the heart of Pennsylvania.

"I think Trump's campaign would be smart to stop through Centre County and central Pennsylvania," he said, adding Trump should aim to increase turnout while being more wary of the Haley sentiment like in Lancaster County. "I don't think he can take this area for granted."

With about 30 days until Election Day, it's still possible one or both presidential candidates might visit. But, historically, that hasn't been the case. Harris' husband, Doug Emhoff , and Trump's son, Don Jr. , rallied voters in separate events here in October 2020. And candidates have stopped during the primaries — such as Beto O'Rourke in 2019 and Bernie Sanders in 2016 — but it's rare for candidates or their running mates to visit here later in the election cycle.

Neither the Harris campaign nor the Trump campaign immediately responded to a CDT message asking if they intended to visit Centre County before Nov. 5. But, regardless of their future plans, there's still a case to be made both for and against future campaign stops here.

"College voters are not a highly consistent voting population, so Centre County is probably not going to get the same kind of attention as these other parts of the state, where you know other folks are going to turn out," Mallinson said. "But, on the other hand, Pennsylvania's been really close the last two election cycles, and both sides really need to try and boost their turnout to win the state.

"So there could be a benefit to having a candidate to go improve the vote margin in Centre County because improving voter margins is going to matter to take the state."