Election 2020: What to watch for in the campaign's final week

The race for the presidency is in the home stretch, with less than a week until Election Day.

Pennsylvania figures to play a prominent role in what unfolds over the next week and who ultimately wins the White House.

Here are five things to watch:

Where will the campaigns go?

The campaigns’ itineraries say a lot about which areas they consider most important.

And no place has been more important than Pennsylvania, according to the Chicago Tribune, which has been tracking the candidates’ campaign stops since Sept. 1.

The Tribune’s list of stops shows President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence have made 16 campaign stops in Pennsylvania, while Democrat Joe Biden and his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris, have made 15.

“That shows you that Pennsylvania is the tipping point,” said G. Terry Madonna, director of Franklin & Marshall’s Center for Politics and Public Affairs.

The list shows other top stops for Trump and Pence include Florida (15 stops), North Carolina (11), Wisconsin (9), Ohio (8), Nevada (6), and Michigan and Arizona (5 each); while other top stops for Biden and Harris include Michigan (10), Florida (8), Wisconsin and Ohio (6 each), and North Carolina and Nevada (5 each).

What will the polls do?

Democrat Hillary Clinton consistently led in the polls going into the 2016 election, only to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory on Election Day.

A week out from the 2016 election, with the race tightening, Real Clear Politics projected Clinton was likely to win at least 259 electoral votes to Trump’s 164, while 115 electoral votes remained tossups. When all was said and done, Trump won 304 and Clinton collected 227. To win, a candidate needs 270.

Real Clear Politics projects Biden is likely to win at least 232 electoral votes to Trump’s 125, with 181 electoral votes in 11 states and two congressional districts considered tossups. If Biden and Trump win all of the states and districts where their respective polling averages are higher, Biden would win 340 electoral votes to Trump’s 198.

That’s in line with a forecast from political website FiveThirtyEight, which projects Biden will win 345 electoral votes to Trump’s 193.

“I don’t pay a whole lot of attention to the polls until now. Now is when they get real,” said Philip Harold, a political science professor at Robert Morris University.

Harold said he has suspected the race is “way tighter than the margins they’re showing. It is just very difficult to beat an incumbent.”

Franklin & Marshall College plans to release its final poll of the election cycle Thursday. Like most public polls, it has consistently shown Biden with a lead. But Madonna said he isn’t ruling anything out.

“I’m not making a prediction. Biden has the lead and right now is the favorite, but I’m not going to rule out that Trump could win the state,” Madonna said.

Court cases

Attorneys involved in several legal challenges related to the election are trying to get their cases in front of the U.S.. Supreme Court, which is back up to nine justices with Monday’s confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett.

Republicans in Pennsylvania had asked the Supreme Court last week to reconsider whether the state should be allowed to count ballots received by mail up to three days after Election Day. Earlier this month, before Barrett was confirmed, the court issued a 4-4 ruling that left a lower-court ruling in place to allow the extension.

“That really puts Pennsylvania at the epicenter of this election because of the three-day rule,” Harold said, noting results from this hotly contested battleground state might be the last to be determined.

And the courts could continue to be something to watch after the election should the results be contested.

Early voting

More than 67 million people already have voted, either in person or by mail, eclipsing the total number of people who did so in 2016, according to the U.S. Elections Project.

It remains to be seen how high that number might go and whether more people will vote before Election Day than on it this year.

The U.S. Elections Project has projected that as many as 85 million people could vote early, and 150 million could vote altogether.

Bombshells and gaffes

The political experts said the candidates will look to avoid any missteps in the final days that could send their campaigns reeling.

“Gaffes are important when they play to type and emphasize a narrative the other campaign is trying to build or when they undercut your own narrative,” Harold said.

For example, Harold pointed out how Biden has tried to build an image that he would be a president for all Americans, regardless of who they voted for, and would work to end political divisiveness. Yet, he referred to a group of Trump supporters gathered outside his drive-in rally in Bucks County over the weekend as “chumps.”

Trump’s campaign seized on Hillary Clinton referring to Trump’s supporters as “deplorables” in 2016. Whether the “chumps” comments will have any adverse effect remains to be seen, but Harold said, “It can be very dangerous to get into spontaneous moments like that at this stage in the game.”