It's been more than half a century since a Republican won Minnesota in a presidential election, but former President Donald Trump says he has a “very good chance” of breaking his losing streak this November in his 2024 rematch with President Biden.
The former president heads to the reliably blue state on Friday to headline the Minnesota Republican Party's annual Lincoln Reagan fundraising dinner.
Trump lost Minnesota by just 1.5 points in his 2016 presidential election victory over Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. But four years ago he lost the state to President Biden by more than seven points in his failed re-election campaign.
“We think we have a very good chance in Minnesota,” Trump emphasized in an interview Wednesday with KSTP, a local television station in the twin cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul. “We have great friendships up there.”
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Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally in Wildwood, New Jersey, Saturday, May 11, 2024. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
Trump added that he has “worked hard in Minnesota” and that “Tom Emmer is very involved,” while pointing to the House majority.
Emmer, who will join Trump at the state GOP gala, is chairing Trump's campaign in Minnesota even though the former president and his allies helped sink Emmer's bid last fall to become House speaker. .
As the Trump and Biden campaigns prepare to battle in seven crucial states that decided the 2020 election (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, which were narrowly won by Biden, and North Carolina, which Trump won by a razor). narrow margin) and will likely play again in the 2024 rematch, both campaigns see opportunities to expand the map.
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Two weekends ago, at a closed-door Republican National Committee retreat for major donors at a resort in Palm Beach, Florida, Trump campaign senior advisers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita and the Veteran pollster Tony Fabrizio highlighted internal polls that suggested both “Minnesota and Virginia are clearly at stake.”
In both states, Donald Trump is in a position to flip key electoral votes in his favor,” highlights the survey, shared with Fox News.
Former President Donald Trump leads a spring retreat for Republican National Committee donors in Palm Beach, Florida, on May 4, 2024. (Donald Trump 2024 Campaign)
And both states have sizable populations of rural white voters without college degrees who disproportionately support the former president.
The Biden campaign does not agree that Minnesota or Virginia are in play.
While noting that they are “not taking any states or any votes for granted,” the Biden campaign's swing states director, Dan Kanninen, told reporters last week that “we're not seeing polls six or seven months out.” general election, certainly matching numbers, as anything more predictive than a weather report is six or seven months away.”
Kanninen noted that the campaign has teams on the ground in both states that engage voters.
“We firmly believe that the Biden-Harris coalition in both Minnesota and Virginia, which has been strong in the midterms and off-year elections, will continue to be strong for us in the fall of 2024,” he added.
And Biden campaign spokeswoman Lauren Hitt, pointing to the president's current fundraising dominance and his advantage in key battlegrounds, argued that “Trump's team has so little campaign or infrastructure from which talk that they are resorting to leaked memos that say 'the polls 'We pay to show us winning.'”
But Democratic Rep. Dean Phillips of Minnesota, who launched an unlikely and unsuccessful primary challenge against the president, insists that “Minnesota is in play.”
Phillips, in an interview this week on Fox News' “Special Edition,” argued that Minnesota “like a lot of states that I think a lot of my fellow Democrats don't want to confess is reality… I'm telling my fellow Democrats colleagues who support President Biden, including myself, that there is a lot of work to do.
This is the second consecutive election in which Trump aims to flip Minnesota.
At a late September 2020 rally in northern Minnesota, Trump boasted about the size of the crowd and insisted that “this is not the crowd of someone who is going to finish second in this state to Sleepy Joe,” a derogatory term. that he used for Biden.
While the Trump campaign looks for opportunities to expand the map in Minnesota and Virginia, the Biden campaign appears to be targeting the swing states of North Carolina and Florida.
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Trump won the Sunshine State by less than four points in 2020, but two years ago, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and Republican Sen. Marco Rubio each won reelection by nearly 20 points.
LaCivita argued that the Biden campaign was playing “a false game” in both states, but insisted that Trump has a “real opportunity to expand the map in Virginia and Minnesota.”
Trump's stop in Minnesota comes a week after he held a large rally in Wilwood, New Jersey, a red stronghold in an overwhelmingly blue state where no Republican has won the state in a presidential election in more than three decades. Trump lost the state to Biden by 16 points four years ago.
“We're going to win New Jersey,” Trump promised at the rally.
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