With the presidential election just two months away, all eyes are on Pennsylvania. Donald Trump and Kamala Harris campaigns has each spent more than $130 million to advertise in the swing state, hoping to win his coveted nineteen electoral votes and pave the way to the Oval Office.

Then safe Pennsylvania is likely crucial to have won the general election — Trump won the state in 2016 and lost in 2020, mirroring the national outcome — political operatives and reporters are once again descending on the region in an effort to crack the code of what makes Pennsylvania voters tick.

This year, as in previous election seasons, politicians and the media continue to peddle the dubious idea that one issue in particular holds excessive weight for Pennsylvania voters: hydraulic fracturing for oil and gas, also known as fracking. On Sept. 4 at a town hall in Pennsylvania moderated by Fox News host Sean Hannity, Trump emphasized his support for fracking, telling the audience that “there is no way” Harris would allow the controversial practice as president.

“If she won, you will have no fracking in Pennsylvania,” Trump said. “You can’t take the chance. You have no choice. You have to vote for me.”

In reality, Harris herself has emphasized that she is no enemy of fracking, despite its well-documented harmful impact on human health, the climate and the environment. While Harris had previously expressed support for a fracking ban during her 2019 presidential run, she has made it clear this election is reversing course. “What I’ve seen is that we can grow, and we can grow a clean energy economy without banning fracking,” Harris told CNN reporter Dana Bash during a sit-down interview in August.

Harris’ change is largely considered part of her bid to win over Pennsylvania, which is one of the nation’s top producing states for fracked natural gas.

The media has been happy to help prop up Pennsylvania’s reputation as a fracking-loving state: during the 2020 election, for example, the New York Times “Traveled to Western Pennsylvania to see if electability is as simple as who supports fracking in Pennsylvania.” That piece cited the views of some Pennsylvania Democrats, including then-Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman, who believed that “a pledge to ban all hydraulic fracturing, better known as fracking, could jeopardize any presidential candidate’s chances of winning this most critical battleground state — and thus the presidency itself.” Recently an article from NPR on August 30th called support for fracking a “key issue” for swing state voters.

Except there’s one big catch: poll results show that support for fracking isn’t the open-and-shut case the national media makes it out to be.

A 2020 CBS/YouGov survey found that a small majority of Pennsylvanians actually oppose fracking, with 52 percent of voters against and 48 percent in favor. Another 2020 poll, this one by Franklin & Marshall College, reported that 48 percent of registered Pennsylvania voters supported a ban on fracking, while only 39 percent opposed such a ban. And in a 2021 poll by the Ohio River Valley Institute, a sustainability-focused think tank, less than a third of Pennsylvanians said they support continued fracking in the state.

On September 5, the Philadelphia Inquirer published one op-ed short title: “Everything you know from TV about Pennsylvania and fracking is wrong.”

“Here’s the truth from someone who actually lives in Pennsylvania,” columnist Will Bunch wrote. “Most people, especially in areas like Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and their suburbs where a lot of voters live, don’t really talk about fracking — certainly not as much as the big issues like the economy or abortion rights.”

Sean O’Leary, senior research fellow for the Ohio River Valley Institute, told Bunch that “he believes a lot of public support for fracking is fueled by politicians — including Democrats like Gov. Josh Shapiro — constantly overestimating the economic rewards.”

In fact, fracking is a much smaller industry in Pennsylvania than one might realize from looking at media headlines. In 2019, the natural gas industry employee fewer than twenty-four thousand people — a tiny fraction of the state’s total employed population and a number that has continued to decline each year. According to for Food & Water Watch, natural gas employment numbers hit a record low in 2023, accounting for a paltry 0.32 percent of the state’s jobs.

Meanwhile, some politicians in Pennsylvania have adopted an unapologetically anti-fracking stance — and still won their elections. Rope. Summer Lee, a member of the cabal of progressives in Congress known as “the Squad” and one of fracking’s most vocal criticismswept the race against his pro-fracking opponent in 2020, receiving 75 percent of the vote. Lee’s winning streak continued this yearwhen she beat out moderate Bhavini Patel in the Democratic primary in April.

Popular support for fracking has waned in Pennsylvania as understanding of its negative effects has grown. A review of more than twenty-five hundred scientific, medical, government and media reports – many of which focused on Pennsylvania – found that fracking is linked to numerous health problems, including cancer, asthma and congenital anomalies. The evidence is staggering, but here are some particularly egregious examples: an August 2023 report from the University of Pittsburgh determined that children who live within a mile of a natural gas well are seven times more likely to develop lymphoma, a rare form of childhood cancer. Another study found that children within a mile of a fracking well were also more likely to develop juvenile leukemia.

In October 2023, Physicians for Social Responsibility published a report detailing how more than five thousand fracking wells in Pennsylvania had been injected with 160 million pounds of secret chemicals, potentially including the class of industrial “forever chemicals” known as PFAS. Exposure to PFAS has been linked to various cancers, reduced fertility, developmental effects and immune suppression, among many other harms. Almost every fifth drinking water system tested in Pennsylvania this year was found to have PFAS levels above Environmental Protection Agency standards.

But thanks to grassroots organizers who have worked for more than a decade to educate the public about fracking, Pennsylvanians are becoming increasingly aware of these damages. Since 2018, Food & Water Watch has worked to enact thirty-five municipal ordinances to protect residents of western Pennsylvania from fracking. One particularly notable win came in July 2022, when the Allegheny County Council voted yes on a measure, supported by Food & Water Watch, to ban all fracking in county parks.

“When I went door to door to talk to people about fracking, I found that educated people were really against it,” Jonathan Reyes, a member of the East Pittsburgh City Council, told. American Prospect 2020. “Many people were very receptive when I talked about the possibility of creating alternatives to fracking.”

And yet as we trudge toward Election Day, these options get little time. Instead, the media has seized on the narrative that Pennsylvanians love fracking and are looking for a presidential candidate who will support it wholeheartedly. But it’s time to listen to what Pennsylvanians really want—and continue the crucial grassroots work that has already soured public opinion on fracking.