Former President Donald Trump is headed to Virginia Saturday for a rally in Salem, three days before the election. Political analyst Karen Hult said Trump is likely hoping the move will boost Republican turnout for congressional races.
Karen Hult is a professor of political science at Virginia Tech. She said western Virginia is a ruby red part of the state, meaning it typically swings towards the right, with some exceptions. This is likely why Donald Trump picked this part of Virginia.
“So part of it could be simply, though he may not win Virginia’s electoral college votes, it may well boost Republican turnout,” Hult said.
She said Republican candidates Ben Cline, John McGuire, Morgan Griffith, and Hung Cao may all be at the rally, hoping to get a boost from Trump supporters.
Hult also said Trump may use the rally to shine a light on Governor Youngkin’s voter registration purge, which made headlines this week when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the state could continue removing suspected non-citizen registrations.
And while polls show Kamala Harris leading Trump in Virginia, Hult says she’s cautious about predicting how voters in the Commonwealth will vote next Tuesday.
She added that neither Trump nor Harris’ campaigns have released results from their private polls.
“Now that doesn’t mean they’re going to be very different from the polls the rest of us have access to,” Hunt said. “But sometimes they are. And so we don’t know about that either.”
Hult also pointed out that voters in two swing states, Pennsylvania and North Carolina, may also make the drive to see Trump in Salem Saturday.
Hult said she also expects Trump to use Virginia’s voter registration purge case as an example of why he’s already casting mistrust on the integrity of the election.
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