Former President Donald Trump said that his campaign will hold a rally at Madison Square Garden in New York City on October 27 as part of a longshot bid to win New York in November.
“We’re gonna make a play for New York. Hasn’t been done in a long time,” Trump told a crowd in Scranton, Pennsylvania, on Wednesday.
The last time a Republican presidential candidate won New York in a general election was Ronald Reagan in 1984 in his landslide victory over Walter Mondale. The odds are certainly stacked against Trump.
The Numbers Don’t Look Good for Trump
Trump’s odds of winning the reliably blue state looked somewhat plausible mid-summer when President Joe Biden was his opponent. A Siena College poll in June showed Trump trailing Biden by a mere eight points — a much thinner margin than Biden’s 23-point victory in 2020. Since 1988, Democratic presidential candidates have averaged 21.5-point wins in New York in the general election.
But Kamala Harris’s rise to the top of the ticket has made the Democrats less vulnerable in New York. She’s pushed the Democrats’ lead back up into the double digits. An Emerson College poll last month has Harris firmly ahead of Trump 54-40, with undecideds shifting toward the vice president.
Trump’s New York Coalition
It’s not all bad news for Trump. He’s doing well in New York’s suburbs, including Long Island, where a Siena College poll from this summer shows him with a 14-point lead in Suffolk County and down by just three points in Nassau County.
It’s these suburban voters who’ll likely make up most of the crowd at the Trump MSG rally later this month, along with supporters from New Jersey, just across the Hudson River. In September, Trump held a rally at Long Island’s Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum.
In Long Island and New York state as a whole, Trump is winning not just the reliably Republican Catholic vote, but also the Jewish vote — by 10 percent margins statewide, according to Siena College.
Notably, Trump’s gap with Harris among households with incomes between $50,000 and $100,000 is a mere five percent. Trump also has support from 34 percent of Latino New Yorkers — nine points higher than his national performance with the same demographic.
Trump has a seven-point lead with men of all backgrounds in New York state, according to the latest Siena College poll — signaling that the political gender divide seen nationally is also playing out in New York.
These figures suggest Trump and broader social issues like crime, inflation, and the migrant crisis may be fundamentally changing New York politics, fragmenting the Democratic Party coalition and driving middle-income voters, Orthodox Jews, and some Asian Americans and Latinos into a new Trump-led Republican coalition with white Catholics.
So, irrespective of whether Trump wins or loses in November, the culture wars and cost of living crisis may have an enduring impact on this once-deep blue state.
What is certain is that Trump will put on a good show at MSG, the world’s most famous arena. As the presidential race heads into its final stretch, Trump will provide political theater on the world’s biggest stage.
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