Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 09:02 pm
After several weeks of polls show Donald Trump falling behind not just in swing states, but also in typically red states, the Republican nominee is taking his campaign to … Connecticut.
Yes, Trump is heading to Connecticut on Saturday, where he hopes to shore up support in a state that hasn’t voted for a Republican since 1988 and isn’t on anybody’s list of key battleground states this year.
There hasn’t been much polling out of the Constitution State, but the few surveys that have come out show Clinton leading Trump comfortably there. In 2012, Barack Obama won the state by 17 points.
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As Politico reported today:
It’s a move that is flummoxing and infuriating Republicans who believe Trump should be spending time and resources in winnable states, not in a place that few consider to be competitive.
“At this point, Florida looks in trouble, North Carolina looks in trouble, they don’t even know who their people are in Ohio,†said Charlie Harper, a prominent conservative writer who runs a think tank in Georgia, where Trump is sliding in the polls. “He can go have lunch in Connecticut and be home for supper, but the map is changing rapidly in the opposite direction. Hillary Clinton is not going to move in to defend Connecticut just because Trump went there.â€
It’s unlikely she’ll need to, given the strong Democratic bent of the state, which has a Democratic governor, an entirely Democratic congressional delegation and voted for Obama by 18 percentage points in 2012. Former GOP Rep. Chris Shays of Connecticut has also recently endorsed her over Trump.
Trump’s decision to waste time and money on a state he will lose in November is leaving many Republicans in disbelief.
“No one in the world thinks he has a shot in Connecticut,” said former Romney strategist Stuart Stevens, according to the same Politico report. “I mean, he’s not going to win any state within that media market.”
On Saturday, The New York Times reported that Trump has bragged to advisers about being able to read polls better than the political experts.
It’s probably safe to say that Trump’s pointless trip to Connecticut – as states like Georgia and South Carolina slip from his grasp – disproves that claim.
Sean Colarossi currently resides in Cleveland, Ohio. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and was an organizing fellow for both of President Obama’s presidential campaigns. He also worked with Planned Parenthood as an Affordable Care Act Outreach Organizer in 2014, helping northeast Ohio residents obtain health insurance coverage.
