Pennsylvania’s ‘Polonia’—Americans of Polish descent—featured in a memorable moment in Harris and Trump’s televised debate in early September.
“Why don’t you tell the 800,000 Polish Americans right here in Pennsylvania how quickly you would give up for the sake of favor and what you think is a friendship with what is known to be a dictator who would eat you for lunch?” Harris jibed Trump as the two candidates jousted over the war Ukraine and relations with Moscow.
Harris’s shout-out to the local Polonia was no accident as her party sees their support as vital as they are concentrated in battleground states. The Republican party is also keen to attract the Polish percentile, but the Democrats have gone all out first to ramp up their Polish campaign.
Harris’s team have held meetings with high-profile Polish Americans including Tom Malinowski, a former congressman for New Jersey. A ‘Polish-Americans for Harris’ Facebook page was launched as well as an online ad targeting the Polish vote, which features the iconic Krakow bugler, a potent symbol of resistance against domination from the east.
The ad plays on Polish and Ukrainian fears over Russian imperialism and includes the tagline: “Putin and Trump. Threat to Freedom.” It goes on to promise Harris will defend America’s allies.
Trump strikes back
The Republican party is equally keen to sway Polish-American voters and announced Trump would meet Poland’s president, Andrzej Duda, when he traveled to the U.S. for the unveiling of a stature commemorating the Solidarity movement.
The event was to be held at the National Shrine of Our Lady of Częstochowa north of Pennsylvania; a site revered by the Polonia, but the meeting was later cancelled. Nonetheless, the plan demonstrates the fierceness with which the Polish vote is being contested.
David James Jackson, a political science professor quoted by NBC News, said the move showed how seriously the voter block is taken.
“The Polish American vote there is meaningful,” Jackson said. “A question I frequently get is whether there is even such a thing as a Polish American vote. Clearly the Harris and Trump campaigns think so.”
Dominik Stecula of Ohio State University told the news service that, “the candidates are clearly making a play for the Polish American vote.”
“It makes sense," he said. "The election will most likely be decided by voters in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, and these states have very large Polish American populations.”
I n 2020, Biden beat Trump in Pennsylvania by a little over 80,000 votes and this year’s election looks like being every bit as tight, or tighter, as Tom Malinowski highlighted:
“We’re talking about an election where a swing of a few thousand voters in any of those states could make all the difference,” he said.
