During the final week leading up to Election Day on Nov. 5, former President Trump is making two brief detours from campaigning in the crucial seven battleground states that will likely determine if the Republican nominee or Vice President Kamala Harris wins the 2024 election.
On Thursday, which is Halloween, the former president will make a campaign stop in New Mexico, and Saturday he’ll visit Virginia. Both states were once key general election battlegrounds that have leaned blue the past two decades.
In fact, you’ve got to look back 20 years – to President George W. Bush’s re-election – to find the last GOP presidential nominee to carry both states.
So why, with time such a precious commodity for presidential campaigns and the clock quickly ticking toward Election Day, is Trump spending time in New Mexico and Virginia?
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Former President Trump speaks during a campaign rally at Madison Square Garden in New York, Oct. 27, 2024. (Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images)
Unlike his large rallies on Sunday in New York City and two weeks ago in southern California – deep blue states the Trump campaign has no illusions of flipping – the former president and his team see opportunities in Virginia and New Mexico.
“As President Trump has said, he will be a president for all Americans, including those in traditionally blue states that Kamala Harris and the Democrats have left behind. Kamala Harris’ dangerously liberal policies have failed Americans across the country – from the Bronx, to Virginia, and New Mexico – which is why President Trump is bringing his America First message and vision for hardworking families right to their front door,” Republican National Committee spokesperson Anna Kelley argued in a statement to Fox News.
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There hasn’t been an abundance of polling in New Mexico, but most recent surveys indicate Harris with an upper single digit lead over Trump, although one survey suggests a tighter contest for the state’s five electoral votes.
“Trump is wasting his time coming to our state as polling shows New Mexicans are set to reject his MAGA extremism and divisive rhetoric yet again,” Democratic Party of New Mexico spokesperson Daniel Garcia claimed in a statement.
And referring to the Oct. 31 stop in Albuquerque by the former president, Garcia took a verbal shot at Trump, saying “a rotund orange mass will be in Albuquerque on Halloween, and we’re not talking about a pumpkin.”
Trump hasn’t set foot in New Mexico in five years.
Former President Trump speaks during a campaign event at Historic Greenbrier Farms in Chesapeake, Virginia, on June 28, 2024. (Parker Michels-Boyce/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
It’s a different story in Virginia, where the former president held a large rally in the southeastern corner of the state in June.
Trump on Saturday holds a rally in Salem, Virginia, in the conservative southwestern corner of the commonwealth.
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Polls in the state indicate the Democratic presidential nominee holding anywhere from a lower double-digit lead to a slight lower single digit edge over the former president.
“We have a really good chance to win Virginia – hasn’t been won in decades by a [GOP] presidential candidate,” Trump told Virginia Republicans in a September tele-rally.
It’s an argument that Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin of Virginia is also making.
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin speaks during the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on July 15, 2024. (Reuters/Jeenah Moon)
But there may be another contributing factor to Trump’s stop in Virginia.
Trump on Friday pilloried a federal judge’s ruling that Virginia must restore more than 1,500 people to the state’s voter rolls, with the former president falsely claiming Harris was behind the decision and charging that it amounted to “election interference.”
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The state of Virginia on Sunday filed an emergency stay application to the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the lower court ruling, which halted the state’s efforts to remove suspected noncitizens from the voter rolls.
Veteran Virginia-based political scientist David Richards of the University of Lynchburg told Fox News that “based on all the polling I am seeing, it is not clear that this rally will help Trump win Virginia.”
“But I think he has bigger ambitions by coming to central Virginia. I think he wants to capitalize on the judicial decision to reinstate voters who have not met the citizenship requirements or had not checked the correct box, and were picked up by a general sweep of registered voters in Virginia,” Richards said. “This plays into his general story about illegal immigrants trying to vote in the election. I think he is seeking a national audience, not necessarily just a Virginia audience, by coming and doing a rally here.”