The Election Is in 48 Days. Why Is Donald Trump Campaigning in NY?

With the election now in its homestretch, and the two campaigns focusing their efforts on the handful of hotly contested swing states, Donald Trump is making a surprising stopover in New York City.

The former president will be holding a campaign rally at the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum on Long Island on Wednesday evening.

The rally is set to begin at 7 p.m., according to the venue’s website, with doors opening as of 3 p.m.

With thousands expected to attend, officials have already warned locals to expect “heavier than usual traffic.”

“Motorists should expect delays and use alternate routes when possible,” Nassau County Police said in a civic alert sent out on Wednesday afternoon.

The rally, the former president’s first since the apparent assassination attempt in Florida on Sunday, will also feature heavy security.

“This will be the safest place in the country on Wednesday,” Nassau County Police Commissioner Patrick Ryder said at a press conference on Monday. “Nobody will be in the Coliseum. We do a complete sweep [Tuesday] night.”

That statement briefly looked hubristic when Nassau County Police Department responded to a “suspicious occurrence” at the location of Trump’s rally. Officers subsequently quashed reports that an explosive device had been found.

Despite being a native of Queens, Donald Trump has virtually no chance of winning over the Big Apple or the state at large come November 5.

New Yorkers have voted blue in the last nine elections, with six of those victories coming by a 20 percent margin.

Biden won New York the 2020 election, securing the state’s 29 electoral college votes with 61 percent, and the 2024 race appears to promise little change.

According to FiveThirtyEight, all four polls conducted in the state since Kamala Harris’s nomination give the vice president at least a 10-point lead over her opponent, raising the question of why the Republican candidate would spend one of few remaining days of the election in a Democrat stronghold.

However, Trump nevertheless seems confident in being able to flip the blue state.

“We have a real chance of winning, for the first time in many decades, New York,” Trump posted to Truth Social on Tuesday. “Hundreds of thousands of Migrants, Crime at record levels, Terrorists pouring in, Inflation eating your heart out – WHAT THE HELL DO YOU HAVE TO LOSE? VOTE FOR TRUMP.”

As a setting, New York City provides Trump with the perfect stage to intensify his focus on the issues that have so far fueled his campaign.

According to the latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, New York City has the fourth highest inflation rate in the nation, with its consumer price index change of 3.7 percent putting it fourth in the nation.

However, the former president’s visit may have less to do with the race to the White House, and may be intended to drum up support for Republicans in this year’s House elections.

Republicans will be attempting to add to the four seats they flipped in the 2022 midterms, which helped the GOP to gain a slim majority in the House.

Democrats in New York currently hold 16 congressional seats to the Republicans’ 10, but several of these races still appear to be in the balance.

Republican Mike LiPetri, a former state assemblyman currently battling Tom Suozzi for New York’s 3^rd Congressional District, said that Trump’s visit was about “energizing the Republican base to make sure that the congressional seats on Long Island – specifically mine – flip into Republican hands.”

LiPetri currently trails Suozzi 37 percent to 51 percent, according to a July McLaughlin & Associates poll, but the congressional hopeful said that the former president’s stopover would give him a boost in the “neck-and-neck” contest.

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