No Republican has win the state in a Presidential election since 2004.…
Hillary Clinton won it against Trump 3 years ago by 8% points…
Donald Trump KNOWS he’s in trouble by even traveling there….
President Donald Trump has done little to expand his base since it carried him to victory 2½ years ago. Until now.
Months after telling Time magazine he would “love to broaden” his core group of supporters, Trump appeared here on Monday for his first autumn campaign rally not tied to a congressional Republican candidate. This time, it was all about him and his ability to connect with new voters.
In New Mexico, that includes Hispanics — a demographic group the president repeatedly addressed during his hour-plus speech, touting economic gains that Hispanic communities have seen under his administration and their ability to understand border security “better than other people.”
“Not too long ago, I saw where the Hispanics were up with me in a poll — up by 17 percent — because the Hispanic Americans, they understand they don’t want criminals coming across the border,” Trump told the crowd. “They don’t want people taking their jobs.”
According to data provided by the Spanish-language network Univision, nearly half of New Mexico’s newly registered voters in 2018 were Hispanic. Republicans in the state saw a 23 percent increase in Hispanic registrants from 2014 to 2018 — and Trump campaign officials said their internal numbers reflect that trend.
“We’ve over-performed with the number of Hispanics showing up to rallies each week, and the polling we’ve done today shows we can clearly win the state,” Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale told POLITICO as he mingled with supporters who arrived early for the president’s rally. Asked why he has so far refused to release those figures publicly, Parscale said it’s too early in the cycle to be parading out positive poll numbers.
But if the Trump campaign is trying to exercise caution in its effort to court voters outside the president’s base, Monday marked an odd start. As a series of openers took the stage to rile up fans before the president arrived — including Sheriff Tony Mace of Cibola County, a Latino Trump supporter — they stressed the need for a border wall and cultural assimilation. When Trump took the stage, he returned to old campaign tactics — lobbing insults against The New York Times, CNN and The Washington Post, and making broad claims about his Democratic opponents and their positions on immigration, guns and abortion….