Standing in a long line outside a Bucks County rally for Vice President Kamala Harris, Nancy Culleton, a retired teacher, was feeling the weight of a presidential election whose stakes, as she put it, are “all base of our democracy.”

“I heard someone say that we’re sleepwalking toward fascism, and I feel like that’s what’s going to happen, you know? If he gets in,” he said, referring to former President Donald Trump’s possible return to power.

In Lehigh County, before a Trump campaign event, Darin Dotter, a Carbon County resident and Republican state committeeman, framed the election in similarly existential terms.

“This is a question of good versus evil,” Dotter said, citing concerns about how schools handle transgender issues and the impact of illegal immigration on American citizens.

“We work hard and hard, for what?” said. “To give it away.”

For months, the 2024 presidential election has been a referendum on starkly different directions the country could take, with Pennsylvania the likely decider. At some point after polls close Tuesday, that direction will become clearer, as will the fears and hopes of millions of voters in a deeply divided Pennsylvania.

Voters are often asked what issues matter most to them, and those answers are categorized: the economy, immigration, reproductive rights. Behind their words lies a real concern, for the country, for themselves, for their families and for the kind of future that their enormously influential votes will launch.

“I just don’t want to look back,” Hirsch Desai, 19, said at Temple University’s Liacouras Center before Bruce Springsteen and former President Barack Obama rallied for Harris last week. “I like to look into the future and see changes. I think she will move us forward.”

The Temple sophomore, a film student whose parents emigrated from India, will cast his first presidential vote in this election. He said Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric bothers him even if it is not directed at those in the country legally.

“I just don’t understand the hate.”

the economy

For Craig Schadt, the choice comes down to the economy and jobs, including his own.

The 51-year-old electronics technician from Germansville, Lehigh County, lost his job during the Biden administration. He said his company cut back because of poor sales, which Schadt attributed to inflation, rising prices and the rising cost of living.

He’s a Republican who plans to vote for Trump for the third time this year because, he says, the GOP can oversee an economic turnaround.

“The test is what he did in his first few years in office,” Schadt said last week at an event at a sports club in Lehigh County where Donald Trump Jr. spoke to voters.

The economy has been the biggest issue of the race, and voters trust Trump will handle it better. Trump’s 2016 victory was driven in part by former Democrats frustrated by the death of manufacturing and blue-collar jobs in places where the industry had long gone.

Schadt’s friend, Mark Krause, 52, of Allentown, said he, too, has felt the effects of the post-pandemic economic upheaval.

“I work in construction. “We can’t get jobs,” Krause said. “I think enough people in this country are done with Bidenomics.”

For Bob and Rita Schmidt, retirement finally came this year when they sold their manufacturing business. The Warminster couple is eager to spend time with their five grandchildren, but they are concerned about Democrats’ tax and economic plans.

“I’ve been doing this for 40 years,” Bob Schmidt said. “We are finally getting a reward. It’s not huge, but it will help us get through old age. If Harris comes in, we can say goodbye to half of that.”

Harris has pledged not to raise taxes on anyone earning less than $400,000 a year and said her main goal would be to alleviate Americans’ economic problems.

“I’m not sure what else I could say,” said Stacey Riley, 53, a Harris supporter, who on a recent Sunday sat in the balcony of a church pew at the Church of Christian Compassion in West Philadelphia waiting for the vice president. . to appear. “I know he’s speaking my language when he talks about middle class.”

Riley, an administrative assistant at Bryn Mawr College, is also concerned about what she described as the chaos of Trump’s leadership.

“For me, it’s personal,” the Lansdowne resident said. “I lost my brother during COVID. “I don’t want to go through the same cycle of fear with Trump as president.”

Immigration

Union worker Marissa Peterson drove more than an hour from Bridgeton, New Jersey, to campaign in Philadelphia for her 9-year-old son.

Jermaine Peterson was born during the Trump administration and became an avid news watcher by the time he reached first grade. One day, after listening to a segment about Trump’s immigration plans, he ran over to ask his mother if they could work to support Harris.

Even at her young age, she had internalized that “everyone who doesn’t look like (Trump) will be impeached,” said Peterson, who is Latina. “That affects me and my family because we don’t look like him.”

Trump has used dark language and promised mass deportations. He repeated false claims that Haitian immigrants ate pets, causing friction and inciting threats in some small towns. His often incendiary focus on illegal immigration resonated from county council meetings to Haiti solidarity rallies and campaign events, as immigrants and non-immigrants alike expressed fears over incendiary rhetoric and as Trump supporters rallied. around the cause.

Abortion

For Pennsylvania women who support Harris, reproductive rights are the number one reason they cite for supporting her. Harris has much more support among women than Trump, and Democrats hope the US Supreme Court will overturn the decision in 2022. Roe v. Wade could be a major vote driver.

“A lot of men can’t relate to that struggle,” said Taylor Killingsworth, 28, of Mechanicsburg. “And I can’t relate to what it feels like to have those freedoms taken away from you.”

Emily Gale, Harris’s organizer with the group Supermajority, said Harris embodies some of the group’s core values, chief among them: “Our bodies are respected.” She said her 9-year-old granddaughter approached her recently and asked why women couldn’t be president.

“Hearing that shocked me,” Gale said, “especially at this time when all of women’s freedoms are being threatened.”

Leadership

Tyler Hoff, a Vietnam veteran from Newtown, said that as a gay man, he feels Trump could threaten LGBTQ rights given the focus on television messaging on transgender issues.

Hoff, an independent, noted that Trump’s former chief of staff, John Kelly, warned that the former president would prefer to govern like a fascist.

“The threats have increased,” Hoff said. “Intimidation has increased. And it’s kind of the same thing, but on some level, that’s even scarier.”

But Dave Ruddock, 83, another Vietnam veteran who saw Trump on Drexel Hill last week, dismissed Kelly’s warnings and past derogatory comments that Trump has allegedly done about people who had served.

“That’s part of Trump’s personality,” Ruddock said. “No one is perfect, but… those policies will make a big difference in the country.”

For Nancy and Brian Smith of Allentown, voting for Trump is about honoring veterans, including their late son.

Joshua Smith took his own life in 2012 after suffering a traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder. “He came home, but he never really came back to us,” Brian Smith said.

Smith said he was horrified by the failed withdrawal from Afghanistan under the Biden administration. During an event with Donald Trump Jr. in Lehigh County last week, he wore a suit emblazoned with the American flag and his son’s photo and dog tags hanging from his neck.

He told a story about meeting Trump during an earlier rally in Harrisburg.

“Do you know what the first thing he said to us was? “Are we okay?” Brian Smith recalled. “He cares about Americans.”

Staff writers Michelle Myers, Gillian McGoldrick and Fallon Roth contributed to this article.