Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign laid out what it sees as its path to victory in Pennsylvania in a memo shared exclusively with NBC News ahead of Monday night’s rally in the Erie County town.

The Harris team pointed to polls showing that Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, had made gains in the battleground state’s suburbs — calling it “our own mini ‘blue wall'” in Pennsylvania — compared to President Joe Biden’s performance there in 2020.

The campaign also emphasized that victory would come with increasing popularity among educated suburbanites, including those who voted for Republicans in recent elections. Nearly 160,000 voters in the state cast ballots for former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley in this year’s Republican Party presidential primaries — with her numbers proving stronger among suburban voters — even after she had already withdrawn from the race against former President Donald Trump.

“The Harris campaign’s path to winning Pennsylvania plays on Trump’s unprecedented weakness in the suburbs,” reads the memo, which also highlights the campaign’s focus on Haley voters. “We have turned the suburbs from red to blue since Trump won them in 2020, and we have also increased our support for women and tripled our support among white, college-educated voters in the state.”

The campaign last month cited surveys from The Philadelphia Inquirer/The New York Times/Siena College and Marist College that showed Harris ahead of Trump by 6 percentage points in the suburbs — a notable improvement over Trump’s 3-point victory over Biden among the Pennsylvanians in the suburbs. 2020, as exit polls showed. (The results of both surveys last month were within margins of error.)

Recent surveys have found the overall race in Pennsylvania to be within the margin of error for polls, with a Quinnipiac University survey this month showing Harris up 3 points, an Inquirer/Times/Siena survey showing her up 4 points and The Wall Street Journal with Trump 1 point ahead.

It’s the hottest battleground on the map, with the most Electoral College votes among hotly contested states, and it’s the most common campaign destination for both Harris and Trump.

Trump’s “weakness in the suburbs means that to actually win, he must double and triple his base in the state’s reddest counties,” said Brendan McPhillips, a senior adviser to Harris’ campaign in Pennsylvania. “And so we go on offense and we go to places where he thinks he has strength and compete.”

The campaign highlighted events Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, have held in red counties like Johnstown, Lancaster and Rochester. It also details the investments made in red parts of the state to “narrow the margins and end Trump’s only hope of victory,” noting that 16 of the 50 campaign offices remain statewide are in counties that Trump won by more than 10 points in 2020.

The recent presidential election in Pennsylvania was exceptionally close. Biden defeated Trump in 2020 by just over 1 point. In 2016, Trump defeated former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by an even smaller margin.

“With most polls showing this is a race with a margin of error, we’re also going on the offensive with rural voters to cut into Trump’s margins — a crucial advantage because Trump’s team doesn’t have the capacity to simultaneously to carry out persuasion and mobilization campaigns,” the spokesperson said. Harris campaign memo reads.

McPhillips said improving Biden’s margins in those counties by just 1 to 2 points would effectively cut off Trump’s path to turning the state red.

“We are eating into his margins in a way that cannot support a win,” he said. “And that’s how we’re going to beat him, and that’s how we can play offense on so many fronts.”

The campaign highlighted that more than 1 million doors had been knocked on in the state as of Sunday, including 250,000 over the weekend, since Harris replaced Biden atop the Democratic ticket. It also referred to the 50 offices and 450 staff on site.

Harris has so far spent far more time in the western part of the state, including rural areas, than in the Philadelphia market, which McPhillips said is partly to help her get acquainted with voters who may be less familiar with her.

For Trump, billionaire tycoon Elon Musk this month stepped up his political involvement in the state through his America PAC, which is working to swing the vote for Trump.

McPhillips dismissed the potential impact of that effort.

“They can’t scale up to the level we are at,” he said. “Even with Elon Musk’s money, you can’t spend enough money to scale an operation that matches ours. It’s too late. You had to start in March, February, January, and they’ve been calling about it for so long. It will be close, that’s for sure. We’ve always planned to do it. But that planning is reflected in the fact that we actually had a plan, and not a concept of it.”

The Trump campaign said the Harris campaign is glossing over an issue it faces in Pennsylvania cities, especially Philadelphia, the state’s top Democratic vote.

“They can point to the suburbs, but in places like Philadelphia they are losing ground,” a Trump campaign official said. “It’s exactly why (former President Barack) Obama just begged African-American men to vote for her. They have sounded the alarm and know they are losing.”

The Trump campaign also pointed out that Republicans had significantly cut the Democratic voter registration advantage in the state, while Bucks, Luzerne and Beaver counties had shifted toward Republican registration edges. It further highlighted reports that working-class voters in Philadelphia have embraced Trump.

Kush Desai, the Trump campaign spokesman in Pennsylvania, highlighted Obama’s visit as a sign that the Harris team was in turmoil. “An Obama visit will not convince Pennsylvanians to vote for four more years of open borders, rising prices and disasters at home and abroad,” Desai said in a statement.

In its memo, the Harris campaign said it believes it can “at least match” Biden’s support in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia in his victory in those cities four years ago. It elaborated on its efforts to reach Black voters in the state, including the staff it has deployed for outreach and engagement and its events aimed at Black voters.

Last week, Obama made unscripted remarks during a campaign stop in Pittsburgh, saying his understanding of the race is that “we have not yet seen in all areas of our neighborhoods and communities the same kind of energy and turnout that we saw when I was running. … (T)hat seems more pronounced among the brothers.”

In an effort to speak directly to black men, he irresolutely urged them to stand behind Harris, saying her record deserves their support.

“This is excellence on display and it should be rewarded,” Obama said.

State Sen. Vincent Hughes told NBC News he could “understand the frustration” Obama expressed.

“Maybe the tone should have been a little different,” he said. “But let’s be very clear about that. Let’s get to the substance of what he said. There is nothing in the background, career or anything that should make any citizen, let alone black men, vote for him. He is not a successful businessman. … He was sued for housing discrimination.”

Hughes said the Harris campaign will achieve its goals among both black men and voters in Philadelphia, adding that he has recently seen a flood of campaign activity there that exceeds what Democrats did in 2020 during the worst of the Covid pandemic.

“Things are moving in the right direction for the vice president,” he said. “Look, for a woman and for a black woman, it’s always harder. It’s not fair, it’s not right, but it’s always harder. If we break through with this election, maybe we can finally break that glass ceiling and not make it so difficult for the next election.”