Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) said Wednesday he thinks former President Trump is a strong candidate in his home state, but he is confident the presumptive GOP nominee will not defeat President Biden in a rematch this fall.
“I fundamentally believe that it’s going to be a close race,” Fetterman said in an interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
Fetterman, who enjoys strong approval ratings in purple Pennsylvania, declined to provide specific advice to Biden when prompted to do so, saying instead about Biden, “He’s already won in 2020, and he’s going to win in this one as well.”
Fetterman said he has long thought Pennsylvania would be a close contest, including ahead of the 2016 presidential cycle, which saw Trump eke out a narrow victory over then-Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.
“But Biden carried Pennsylvania by 80,000 votes, and now, he has a strong record, but it’s still going to be close,” Fetterman said, adding, “Trump has a strong kind of position in Pennsylvania. He definitely does, but I don’t believe he can win, ultimately.”
Fetterman said that while issues like inflation and health care are important to voters, he thinks the fundamental difference in the personalities of Trump and Biden will be the determinative factor going into this election.
“I really do think, though, that the main issue is the personalities. It’s like, what do you want? I’m a voter, do I want that kind of chaos and that kind of depravity? Or do you want a decent president that got us through the pandemic, that has been addressing inflation, and now has been addressing wars, both in the Ukraine and in Gaza as well, too,” Fetterman said.
“If you really think that Trump is going to make any of those situations better, I mean, that’s their choice, but I do believe that enough Pennsylvanians are going to decide that this is our guy,” he added, referring to Biden. “That’s my guy.”
Fetterman, who won a close race for the U.S. Senate seat in 2022, said he was proud to campaign with Biden in 2022 and wasn’t too concerned about the polls.
“All these polls now, I’m not really concerned about that,” Fetterman said. “The polls had me that I was going to lose by up to 1 or 2 points, and we won by 5. So, I do believe that it’s a very close race.”
According to The Hill’s Decision Desk HQ 2024 polling average for the presidential race in Pennsylvania, Trump leads Biden by 1.5 percentage points, within most polls’ margins of error.