By Marianne LeVine, Hannah Knowles, The Washington Post (c) 2024
Donald Trump is spending some of his waning time on the campaign trail stopping in two states that nonpartisan analysts do not expect him to win: New Mexico and Virginia.
The Republican presidential nominee’s decision to visit states regarded as safely Democratic terrain is part of an unorthodox strategy that has also included travels to even bluer states such as California, New Jersey and New York. While Trump’s advisers and allies say they see advantages in these stops, including helping down-ballot Republicans and popping into geographically convenient places that might be more competitive than they seem, others see them as a risk they could come to regret.
“The most limited resource at this point is time,” said Republican strategist Alex Conant. “If he ends up losing Pennsylvania by 1,000 votes, he’ll regret having spent time in Virginia.”
Trump was holding a rally Thursday in Albuquerque, a departure from visits to the seven close-fought battleground states where the outcomes are expected to determine the winner. On Saturday, he will campaign in Salem, Virginia.
He lost both states by double-digit percentage margins four years ago, the latest in a long line of GOP defeats. The last year a Republican candidate won New Mexico and Virginia was 2004, when Eminem and Shania Twain topped the Billboard charts, “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” and “Garden State” were box-office hits, and George W. Bush was on the ballot.
Trump and his allies are projecting confidence about his outlook nationally, even as public opinion polls show a close contest with Vice President Kamala Harris. A Virginia Republican strategist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to be more candid, sized up Trump’s visit to Virginia as a way to flex confidence nationwide instead of an actual play for Virginia. If Trump were actually trying to win the state, he would campaign in a swingier area with more people, the strategist said.
The Republican has a long record of baselessly trying to discredit elections with his words and actions, and he has been using misinformation to lay the groundwork to claim a stolen election if he loses, which he did in 2020. He is already suggesting there is “cheating” in Pennsylvania, even as officials say the election is secure.
Trump’s trips to blue states have drawn large crowds and outsize attention. The former president has made predictions about winning there even though there are no indications of major upsets in the offing.
Trump held a rally Sunday in New York’s Madison Square Garden where speakers lobbed racist and sexist insults. At a rally on Long Island in September, Trump insisted: “We are going to win New York,” a state that hasn’t gone for a Republican in a presidential election since 1984.
Trump insisted Wednesday that he would win California if “God came down from on high and God said, ‘I will be the voting tabulator for the day.’” He added: “I do great with the Hispanics.” The last Republican presidential candidate to win California was George H.W. Bush.
A Trump adviser who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss strategy described Virginia as highly competitive and New Mexico, which is on the way to events Trump is holding in Nevada and Arizona, as becoming more competitive.
But public opinion polls do not show that, and nonpartisan analysts do not see it that way. The Cook Political Report has classified both states as “Likely Democratic.” A recent Washington Post-Schar School poll found that Harris held a six-point edge over Trump among likely voters in Virginia.
The Democratic Party of Virginia dismissed Trump’s visit as an antic.
“Virginians see through his empty theatrics – they keep rejecting his chaos every time and our Democratic performance in early vote shows we will reject him strongly again,” Susan Swecker, chairwoman of the state’s Democratic Party, said in a statement. “We are crushing it in early voting with big turnout surges, backed by a real ground game.”
Some Republican strategists said they viewed Trump’s visits to California and New York as a way to capitalize on those states’ media markets and to help boost Republicans in key House races. But they said the trips to New Mexico and Virginia were perplexing. Neither campaign, or their affiliated super PACs, has spent money on TV ads in either state, according to the tracking firm AdImpact.
The rest of Trump’s announced schedule for the final stretch is more focused on the battleground states, where both campaigns have concentrated most of their time and resources. In addition to Nevada, his campaign has so far announced that he will return to Wisconsin on Friday and hold two rallies in North Carolina on Saturday.