iStock/Oleksii Liskonih(SANTA FE, New Mexico) — For the second time in nearly a month President Donald Trump will plant his flag Monday night in a state he lost in 2016 when he brings his massive campaign rally roadshow to New Mexico — a move that’s part of a wider strategy for the campaign which has its sights on flipping a number of blue states red in 2020.
It may seem strange for the Trump campaign to travel out West and hold a rally in a state that, not only did the president lose by nearly double digits, but one that hasn’t gone Republican in well over a decade — but the move is actually backed by internal data the team is seeing on the ground.
Back in February, during the president’s trip to El Paso, Texas, for his first rally of the year, the campaign noticed something: A significant number of supporters from neighboring New Mexico had made the trip to Texas to see the president.
The president’s larger reelection strategy aims to win in blue states such as Nevada, New Hampshire and New Mexico, which the campaign has identified as vulnerable in 2020.
“We saw in the data thousands of voters who did not vote for the president in 2016 show up to a rally, come listen to the president and register [to vote],” Parscale told reporters last week. “I’ve continued to say the president’s policies are a win for Latino voters across America … and one of the first symbols of this was the El Paso rally.”
The Trump campaign views the president’s hardline on immigration as a signature issue that’s resonated in the border state.
“As we started doing polling there, we saw a dramatic increase from 2016 and I went over this with the president and he said, ‘Let’s go straight into Albuquerque,’” Parscale added.
Monday’s rally in New Mexico comes just weeks after the president first took his campaign into a blue state with a rally in New Hampshire in late August, a state he lost by fewer than 3,000 votes in 2016.
The campaign is already seeing one of the best responses for registrations regarding Monday’s rally, and according to Parscale, it’s a testament to the president’s policies resonating in the area.
“New Mexico is a state that the Trump’s policies are really working,” he added.
Copyright © 2019, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.