NEW YORK:Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump will host a campaign rally in the predominantly Hispanic and Black South Bronx neighborhood of New York on Thursday, targeting a Democratic stronghold as he tries to chip away at President Joe Biden’s support among voters of color.
Recent polls suggest Trump is gaining ground with voters of color who have traditionally supported Democrats. Trump’s campaign sees an opportunity to grab enough of their votes to make the difference in battleground states in the Nov. 5 election.
That is not the case with New York, which Trump lost by 23 percentage points in 2020 and has no chance of winning this year, political analysts say. But a well-attended rally held in the city and covered by major TV networks could help project his message to Black and Hispanic voters nationwide.
“I think it’s part of this larger narrative where he’s trying to chip away at Biden’s support amongst Black and Latino men, primarily,” said Christina Greer, an associate professor of political science at Fordham University. “By him going to the South Bronx, he can say ‘I’m talking to communities that Joe Biden is taking for granted.’”
Roughly 55% of Bronx County residents are Hispanic and about one-third are Black, according to 2022 census data.
Trump’s focus on voters of color reflects both candidates’ efforts to look beyond their base in what national polls show to be a close re-match. Some 40% of registered voters in a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll said they would vote for Biden if the election were held today, with the same share picking Trump.
Trump won the U.S. presidency in 2016 with less support from Black and Hispanic voters than any president in at least 40 years, then made up ground with both groups in the 2020 race.
In the New York Times/Siena College poll in March, Trump was selected by 23% of Black and 46% of Hispanic respondents in a one-on-one matchup with Biden. That is far higher than the 12% of Black and 32% of Hispanic voters Trump won in 2020, according to Edison Research exit polls.
Political analysts have attributed Biden’s slipping support among voters of color this election cycle in part to the outsized impact of inflation on people living paycheck to paycheck.
At Thursday’s rally in Crotona Park, Trump is expected to focus on the economy, crime and immigration – three main planks of his campaign. He will highlight inflation under Biden in particular, his campaign said.
Biden has had a flurry of actions and events focused on bolstering support among African American voters. He has singled out Trump and other Republicans for attacking programs aimed at improving diversity, equity and inclusion.
On Thursday, the Biden campaign released a pair of TV and radio ads highlighting Trump’s past treatment of Black people, including his false claims that Barack Obama, the first African-American president, was not born in the U.S., and his calls for the execution of a group of Black and Hispanic teens who were convicted but later exonerated of raping a white woman jogging in New York’s Central Park in 1989.
Janiyah Thomas, Black media director for the Trump campaign, said in a statement that Biden was trying to divert attention from “terrible policies that are hurting our community” and noted that as a senator Biden helped advance a bipartisan crime bill in 1994 that led to more Black men being locked up.
Trump’s rally schedule has had to compete with his court appearances on criminal and civil charges. He is standing trial in New York on charges he falsified business records to hide a hush money payment to a porn star before the 2016 election. A verdict could come as early as next week.
In April, Trump made a campaign appearance at a convenience store in Harlem, New York, a predominantly Black neighborhood in Manhattan that has historically voted for Democrats.
While speaking to a Black conservative group in South Carolina before the state’s primary election in February, Trump likened the four criminal cases against him to discrimination faced by Black Americans and said they had come to “embrace” his mug shots.
Trump’s legal challenges, including federal charges over his alleged efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss and his handling of classified documents, differ greatly from the historic inequities Black Americans have experienced in the criminal justice system.
Democratic U.S. Representative Ritchie Torres, who represents the Bronx, on Thursday said it was clear to New Yorkers in the borough that Trump put his self interests over their needs.
“I’m confident the people of the Bronx are not going to buy the snake oil he’s selling,” Torres told MSNBC in an interview.
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