Welcome to the online edition of From the Politics Desk. This evening newsletter brings you the latest reporting and analysis from campaigns, the White House and Capitol Hill from the NBC News politics team.
In today’s edition, national political correspondent Steve Kornacki delves into the key areas where Donald Trump’s standing with Puerto Rican voters will be tested. Additionally, senior national correspondent Matt Dixon considers how President Trump is at risk of drowning out his own closing arguments.
Sign up here to receive this newsletter in your inbox every weekday.
Where Trump’s support will be tested among Puerto Rican voters
Steve Kornacki
Donald Trump will campaign in Allentown, Pennsylvania this evening amid questions about whether he will lose support among Puerto Rican voters in the aftermath of his Madison Square Garden rally. It’s in a whirlpool.
The stakes for Trump are abundantly clear. He already had the support of Hispanics of all origins, including Puerto Ricans, in 2020, and polls show he is poised to do even better this time around. And Pennsylvania, with its rapidly growing Hispanic population, is exactly the state where this new support could give Trump a decisive advantage — if it materializes on Election Day. Ba.
Allentown is a city with a majority Hispanic population of 125,000 people, and approximately one-quarter of the population is Puerto Rican, making it one of the largest concentrations of Puerto Ricans in the United States. It is a stronghold of the Democratic Party, but President Trump has made inroads there. In 2020, the difference in points was reduced from 42 points in 2016 to 35 points.
Allentown is also part of a series of small and medium-sized cities in eastern Pennsylvania with large Hispanic populations, including Reading, Bethlehem, Lebanon, Hazleton, and Easton. Although the specific concentrations of Puerto Ricans vary, all of these cities performed better in 2020 compared to 2016, even as President Trump’s approval ratings declined in Pennsylvania as a whole.
Further growth among the Hispanic electorate may be essential to Trump’s calculations in the Keystone State, as Kamala Harris aims to gain more ground in Philadelphia and similar areas.
Pennsylvania voting closes at 8pm ET on election night, but we may get some big clues about President Trump’s support for Puerto Rico before then. Osceola County, Florida, with a majority Hispanic population, is a large county just south of Orlando that is about one-third Puerto Rican (about 450,000 people – and growing). In 2020, Trump lost Osceola by 14 points, a significant improvement from 2016, when he lost by 25 points. Florida reports its votes so efficiently that we should know how Trump is faring in Osceola by 7 p.m. ET. It’s a harbinger of things to come in Pennsylvania.
Of course, despite the current media firestorm, Trump may not lose significant support among Hispanics. What’s more, you may be looking in the wrong place to assess the potential impact from a bull market. Polls show that Trump’s provocative behavior is particularly disgusting among suburbanites with college degrees, voters who strongly opposed Trump in 2016, and even more so in 2020. It has been consistently shown that Are some of these voters unwillingly giving up on supporting Mr. Trump? Now who would have said it couldn’t be done?
President Trump threatens to drown out his final message in the final stages of election
matt dixon
“Are you better now than four years ago?”
It’s a question Donald Trump has been posing at the beginning of campaign rallies over the past week.
Taken together, events in more than a half-dozen battleground states and key interviews with prominent figures in conservative media served as a makeshift closing argument to a sharply divided electorate in this historic presidential election. .
Trump and Kamala Harris have spent months painting vastly different visions for the country’s future, but with Election Day just a week away, they are using eerily similar messages to reach agreement. I’m trying to make it happen.
Harris used the closing weeks to demonstrate that President Trump is determined to upend political norms, believes the January 6 attack was a good thing, and wants to build friendships with authoritarian leaders around the world. He has spent much of his time trying to convince a polarized nation that he intends to harness the power of the federal government. To attack political opponents.
President Trump, on the other hand, is determined to upend political norms, believes the January 6th attack was a good thing, wants to forge friendships with authoritarian leaders around the world, and is determined to upend national power. He has spent the last few weeks trying to convince a polarized nation that he intends to use the The federal government attacks his political opponents.
The challenge for both sides is to convince countries that their worldview is the correct one. And for Trump, it’s also about sticking to his message.
President Trump has sought to outline what he wants to be the basis of his policy pitch to American voters at daily rallies over the past week in battleground states such as Arizona, Georgia, Michigan and North Carolina.
But in recent days, any attempt to expand on those positions has been easily overshadowed by the same, oft-used provocations that Mr. Trump seeks to elicit loud applause from his audience. Among them are talking about Harris’ intelligence (Harris regularly calls her “stupid”), calling the United States the “trash” of the world, and saying, without evidence, that Harris is drunk or on drugs. It involves regularly comparing yourself to the inventor. The content of the clip threatens to jail political opponents and talks about certain private body parts of legendary golfer Arnold Palmer.
Read more about Matt →
Speaking of closing arguments, Harris will tonight ask voters to “turn the page” on the Trump era with a speech at the venue of the former president’s January 6 speech. Read more →
🗞️ Today’s Top News
🗣️ Notable quote: Speaker of the House Mike Johnson told an audience at a campaign event in Pennsylvania that there would be “massive” health care changes in America if Trump wins the election. Continue reading → 🔊 Turn up the volume: Elon Musk, who has emerged as a powerful ally of President Trump, is leaning into violent and vile rhetoric directed at Harris. Continue reading → 👀 Focus on voting: President Trump ramps up baseless allegations of election fraud, but legal experts say any attempts to derail the process are likely to hit new guardrails this time , states that such an attempt is unlikely to be successful. Continue reading → ⚖️ Trump on trial: Win or lose, here’s what will happen to Trump’s case after the election. Continue reading → ➡️ Source: Steve Bannon, a podcast host and former Trump campaign official, was released after serving a sentence for contempt of Congress. Continue reading → 🗽 Empire mindset: Trump appears to be stronger in New York than most Republicans in recent elections, a dynamic that makes it difficult for candidates who voted against Democrats in certain areas may cause. Continue reading → 🗳️ About voting: Voters next week will decide the fate of a total of 147 ballot measures across 41 states, ranging from abortion to marijuana to immigration. Continue reading → 🎙️ The boys are back in town: Following President Trump’s recent appearance, JD Vance records an interview with podcaster Joe Rogan. Read more → 🏛️ Back on campus: Harris plans to spend election night at her alma mater, Howard University in Washington, D.C. Read more → 🎤 Q&A: Emma Barnett talks about singer John Legend, who attended college in Philadelphia He talked about his campaign efforts. Campaign trail supporting Harris and other Democrats. Read more → Follow the live broadcast from the campaign trail →
That’s all from the political desk. If you have any feedback, love it or hate it, email us at politicsnewsletter@nbcuni.com.
And if you’re a fan, please share it with everyone. You can sign up here.