Hillary Clinton and Donald J. Trump
are using the final Saturday before Election Day to make their closing
pitches to voters, with Mrs. Clinton in South Florida and Philadelphia
and Mr. Trump dashing to four states across three time zones — the sort
of barnstorming tours presidential candidates traditionally have made in
the last 72 hours before Election Day.
Except
there is no such thing as Election Day any longer — more than 33
million Americans had already voted by Friday. And there are signs from
these early returns, including high turnout among Hispanic voters in key
states, that could be cause for concern for the Trump campaign.
Here is a look at what’s happening in the campaign as the final weekend begins:
Early voting could spell trouble for Trump in Nevada.
According to Jon Ralston, a political analyst for KTNV, high turnout from Latinos and Democrats in the state’s crucial Clark County is a bad omen for Republicans.
Democrats
outpaced Republicans in Clark County by 11,000 votes cast on Friday,
Mr. Ralston reported, giving Mrs. Clinton a larger firewall than
President Obama had in the state when he won by seven points in 2012.
Thousands
of voters, mostly Latino, lined up late into the night to vote,
suggesting that Republicans could also face losses down ballot on
Tuesday.
Clinton returns to South Florida in an effort to galvanize Latino voters as early voting ends in some counties.
Mrs.
Clinton’s afternoon rally in Pembroke Pines, an increasingly diverse
community in Broward County, is aimed at driving South Florida’s mix of
Hispanic, black, Caribbean and Jewish voters to cast an early vote. Mr.
Trump aimed to use a morning rally in Tampa, one of the country’s
bellwether cities, to energize his loyalists and persuade the dwindling
number of fence-sitters.
Analyses
of the early vote suggest a highly competitive finish — fitting for the
state that brought us the 2000 recount — but with Hispanics voting in
far greater numbers than they did four years ago. If those voters break
to Mrs. Clinton, it could be difficult for Mr. Trump to win Florida.
And
that could effectively decide the election. Mr. Trump has virtually no
path to 270 electoral votes without the 29 from Florida, the biggest
swing state of them all.
Graphic
Voting Early, and in Droves: Over 22 Million Ballots Are Already In
With eight days until the general election, more than 22
million people have already voted, through absentee ballots and early
voting.
At a rally in Tampa, Trump called Clinton a ‘constitutional crisis’ in the making.
Mr.
Trump stuck to his favorite lines of attack at a Saturday morning
rally, saying that Mrs. Clinton and her special-interest cronies will
pillage the pocket books of regular Americans if she is elected and
asserting that the Obama administration is colluding with the Justice
Department to protect her from the legal consequences of her email
practices.
Mr. Trump also issued warnings to companies who are considering moving their operations to other countries.
And, to the delight of his supporters, he vowed that a wall along the border with Mexico would happen no matter what.
“The harder they fight us, the higher it goes,” Mr. Trump said to cheers.
Trump mines for votes in Western push.
Taking
advantage of the time zones, Mr. Trump has evening events scheduled
Saturday in Reno and Denver, after an afternoon stop in North Carolina.
Strategists in both parties were somewhat puzzled by the trip west — and
not just because Nevada’s early vote period ended on Friday.
Nevada
and Colorado are both increasingly filled with new voters, some of them
immigrants and others transplants from other states. They have made the
once conservative-leaning states far more friendly to Democrats. In
other words, these are not good fits for Mr. Trump’s style of hard-edge
populism.
If
Mr. Trump loses the race because he only narrowly lost the older and
whiter Rust Belt states, he may regret continuing to spend time and
money in Western states with more forbidding demographics.
On the Trail: Friday, Nov. 4
CreditDamon Winter/The New York Times
Paul Ryan joins Mike Pence on the trail in Wisconsin.
With
Mr. Trump hundreds of miles away in North Carolina, a rare glimpse of
party unity was on display in Mukwonago, Wisc., where Speaker Paul D.
Ryan joined Indiana Gov. Mike Pence for a rally in Mr. Ryan’s home
state.
While
Mr. Ryan has generally steered clear from the Trump campaign in recent
weeks, he recently acknowledged that he voted for Mr. Trump along with
all of the Republicans on the ballot. On Saturday, he was more
vociferous in his support of the nominee, promising to work with him to
repeal the Affordable Care Act.
“When
Donald Trump says that he wants a special session to repeal and replace
Obamacare, let me tell you that as speaker of the House, we are ready,
we are willing and we have a plan to do that,” Mr. Ryan said.
The
relationship between Mr. Ryan and Mr. Trump remains a frosty one, but
it was clear that the highest ranking Republican in Congress feels
genuine affection for Mr. Pence as a kindred conservative spirit. “I
have seen this man when no one is watching this man be a man of courage,
of integrity,” Mr. Ryan said. “He is from the heart of the conservative
movement.”
Trump plans last-minute trip to Minnesota.
The
campaigns are keeping their schedules fluid in the race’s waning,
shifting plans and dispatching surrogates as polls and early voting
returns trickle in.
Mr.
Trump said on Saturday that he would make a stop in Minnesota before
Election Day, and his running mate, Gov. Mike Pence, is expected to do
the same. Whether the trip to the traditionally blue state was a sign of
an expanding map or a shrinking one for Mr. Trump remains to be seen.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Clinton is extending her strategy of trying to turn free concerts into votes.
On Sunday, she will return to New Hampshire to campaign in Manchester with the Grammy-winning singer James Taylor.
Clinton looks to dash Republicans’ Pennsylvania dreams again.
No
state has been so tempting, yet so elusive, for Republicans than
Pennsylvania. Mitt Romney made a last-minute trip there four years ago
when it was clear that he needed to find an alternate path to 270, and
Mr. Trump has refused to give up on it despite every public poll showing
that he’s losing there.
He
was there on Friday, rallying voters in Hershey. It is this central
part of the state — what the Democratic strategist James Carville once
cracked was the Alabama that stood between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh —
that has kept Mr. Trump somewhat competitive.
Yet
Pennsylvania elections are won and lost not in the “T” between the two
cities, but rather in the heavily populated Philadelphia region.
Mrs.
Clinton has been dominant there in the polls, benefiting from the mix
of suburban moderates and liberal city voters. But there is no in-person
early vote in the state so data-obsessed that Democrats are somewhat
uneasy about where they actually stand. In particular, they are
concerned about turnout among millennials and African-Americans tapering
off from Barack Obama’s two wins.
The
solution: Mrs. Clinton is coming to Philadelphia twice in the
campaign’s closing days, once with the pop singer Katy Perry on Saturday
night and then, in a flashing neon sign of continuity, with the
president and Michelle Obama on Monday evening for one final
pre-election rally.
No comments:
Post a Comment