Get ready for Donald Trump’s blue state extravaganza.
With less than four weeks until Election Day, the Republican presidential nominee is scheduled to hold rallies in staunchly Democratic states he has virtually no chance of winning. It’s an unorthodox strategy campaign advisers say is designed to focus on areas where Democratic policies have failed, but it will also keep him away from the small handful of swing states almost certain to determine the election.
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Over the next month, Trump has events scheduled in Colorado, California, Illinois and New York. President Joe Biden won those states by an average of 20 points in 2020, with his 13-point Colorado win the closest. And Colorado is the only one of those states to have voted for a Republican presidential nominee this millennium, backing George W. Bush in 2004.
While each event will be held in slightly different venues, the most notable will be this month in Madison Square Garden in New York City, where Trump has long said he wanted to hold a political rally.
“Choosing high-impact settings makes it so the media can’t look away and refuse to cover the issues and the solutions President Trump is offering,” a senior Trump campaign adviser said of the strategy. “We live in a nationalized media environment, and the national media’s attention on these large-scale, outside-the-norm settings increases the reach of his message across the country and penetrates in every battleground state.”
Some Trump supporters also argued that going into areas of the country traditionally not visited by GOP presidential candidates could have a coattail effect, helping boost down-ballot Republicans in tough races. There are a handful of competitive House races in those states — particularly in California and New York — where the majority is likely to be decided by razor-thin margins.
Still, the race is almost certain to be decided in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, states that are within the margin of error in most public polling and considered winnable for both Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.
“This does not seem like a campaign putting their candidate in critical vote-rich or swing-vote locations — it seems more like a candidate who wants his campaign to put on rallies for optics and vibes,” longtime Republican operative Matthew Bartlett said.
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