Harris is visiting Arizona. But her campaign is prioritizing the Rust Belt.

When Vice President Kamala Harris suddenly seized the Democratic nomination in July, Democrats hoped she could win the Sun Belt states that President Joe Biden appeared all but doomed in.

Harris is still competitive there, but the last two months reveal they are not the states she is prioritizing.

When Harris touches down in Arizona, she will be setting foot in the West for the first time in seven weeks. And a close read of her travel schedule and advertising across the battlegrounds suggests it isn’t the Sun Belt but the Rust Belt that her campaign is primarily banking on.

“Looking at spending and stops, it’s hard not to conclude that winning Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan is plan A for Harris to win,” said Mike Mikus, a Pennsylvania-based Democratic strategist. “Based on everything I’m seeing, Harris is stronger in the Rust Belt than the Sun Belt. Both are going to be very close either way.”

It’s a reality that some Democrats even in the South and West are beginning to accept. Recent polling shows former President Donald Trump’s strength in Arizona and other Sun Belt battlegrounds. Though Harris has brought those states within striking distance of victory — polls and her campaign's spending show they are still in play — she continues to perform better in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.

Harris’ prioritization of those states is showing in her campaign. The campaign’s biggest targets for TV, radio and digital ad spending have been Pennsylvania and Michigan. Since Harris took over for Biden, her campaign has spent $136 million on TV and radio across those states and Wisconsin, compared to $113 million across the four Sun Belt states. And on Facebook and Instagram, she has spent about 40 percent more targeting Rust Belt voters than Sun Belt ones, according to data from the platforms’ parent company, Meta.

And then there’s her travel schedule. While there are several ways to measure time spent campaigning in swing states, every way shows that Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz, have devoted the most time to the Blue Wall. Since Harris replaced Biden, she and Walz have done 25 visits in the Rust Belt, including 13 in the all-crucial state of Pennsylvania, compared to just 16 across the four Sun Belt states, including just one each from Harris herself in Arizona and Nevada, according to a POLITICO analysis.

And Harris has made as many trips to the Southern battlegrounds as she has to one critical Rust Belt state — Pennsylvania — alone.

“I read it as the Harris campaign doing the blocking and tackling of politics. They are making sure that Democrats don’t lose the Blue Wall in the Rust Belt, so of course they’re going to spend time there, especially in Pennsylvania,” said Douglas Wilson, a Democratic strategist in North Carolina. “At the same time, they’re also spending some time in the Sun Belt because as a strategy Democrats are looking at this and saying, ‘If we win North Carolina, that literally takes a chess piece away from the Trump campaign that they need to win.’”

A Democratic strategist in Arizona, granted anonymity to speak candidly about the state of the race, was more blunt: “If you get Arizona, but you don’t get Pennsylvania and you don’t get the Midwest, it doesn’t matter because you can’t win the election.”

The Harris campaign continues to say publicly that it has multiple paths to 270 electoral votes. And campaign aides push back on the idea that the Rust Belt is their plan A, saying that is not true and arguing they have had to spend more in Rust Belt states to keep up with Republican super PACs. They also note that Harris’ second most traveled-to state behind Pennsylvania is Georgia, that her travel schedule this week and last reflects the dual importance of both the Rust Belt and the Sun Belt, and that she has comparable staffing levels in the Blue Wall and the Sun Belt. The fewer trips to Arizona and Nevada, they say, are about distance.

Dan Kanninen, the Harris campaign’s battleground states director, said the campaign is “competing very hard in all the key battlegrounds.”

“Our strategic goal is to maximize the number of pathways to 270. All said — we're in a pretty unique and strong position: Past presidential campaigns have had to go all in on one path to victory or a handful of states,” he said. “But we have the resources, the candidate and the message to compete across the board."

Sun Belt strategists say the investments the Harris campaign is making on the ground and on the airwaves are a show of its seriousness. If Harris loses Pennsylvania, she’ll need either Georgia or North Carolina and a second Sun Belt state to notch the electoral votes she needs.

But they also note what happened in 2016 — when Hillary Clinton failed to protect the Blue Wall, which Trump swept — as a cautionary tale.

“My sense is they are trying to win here, but step one is locking down those three Blue Wall states,” said a second Democratic operative in Arizona who was granted anonymity to speak frankly about the race. “What you want to do is put yourself in a position where if you get a bad poll back in a state on Oct. 15, you have another pathway.”

There are reasons for Democrats to remain optimistic about their chances in the Sun Belt. Three of the states have Senate or gubernatorial races that will help drive turnout, including the Ruben Gallego-Kari Lake Senate showdown in Arizona and Mark Robinson’s sputtering campaign against Democratic gubernatorial nominee Josh Stein in North Carolina. And Nevada, as a small state, has a solid Democratic turnout machine that could grind out a victory in a tight race.

Daniele Monroe-Moreno, chair of Nevada’s Democratic party, said that Harris is “doing what it takes to win here,” including investing early in an “expansive ground game.” The vice president is also making her second trip as a candidate to the state on Sunday.

"Nevada will play a critical role in determining our next president and the vice president’s travel to our state this weekend is just further evidence,” she said.

Some Democrats said they see Harris’ fewer stops in the West more as a byproduct of logistical challenges and a compressed calendar of which large chunks have been eaten up by the Democratic National Convention and the debate than as a sole reflection of the campaign’s priorities. In her absence, Walz and his wife Gwen, as well as Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, have been stumping in the states.

But there is a likely political calculus beyond logistics to the states that Harris is targeting. While the race remains tight in all seven battleground states, polling averages show Harris with a slight edge in Rust Belt states whereas Trump is slightly favored in all of the Sun Belt states except for Nevada, a state that is notoriously hard to poll.

While the vice president is performing far better in the South and West than Biden did, Trump’s edge in those states is reflective of the Harris campaign’s ongoing challenges to bring younger and more diverse non-college voters — including Latinos and young men — back into the Democratic Party fold. Meanwhile, Democrats have performed strongly in the Rust Belt in recent years and the Blue Wall is home to a larger proportion of registered Democrats.

J.J. Balaban, a Pennsylvania-based Democratic strategist, added that “presidential campaigns are premised on scarcity of resources. Nevada is a bit unique … but given the track record of Democrats performing better and generally polling better in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania than in Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina, it makes sense that the Harris campaign would be spending more resources there.”

But, he said, “they are spending a lot in the Sun Belt, so it doesn’t seem like those states are being neglected by the Harris campaign.”

The Rust Belt strategy may look even more appealing to Democrats after this week’s news that a GOP push to change Nebraska’s unique electoral vote system to a winner-take-all structure is dead, making it likely that Harris will win one electoral vote in Nebraska. Had it been successful, even if Harris won all the Rust Belt states, she still would have been one electoral vote shy of 270 and would have needed to win at least one of the four Sun Belt states, in addition to the Blue Wall.

“I think they were drawn to Pennsylvania, and the Rust Belt, the Midwest, because it was more evident to them in a place that is experiencing marginal change and the extremism of Trump that they could do better there,” said Chuck Coughlin, a veteran operative in Arizona who left the Republican Party under Trump. “I think they did not think about how to couple her ‘opportunity economy’ narrative — and I don’t think they’ve done this yet — to what happened in the Sun Belt.”

“They’ve failed to connect that narrative tissue,” he said.