Why Trump is Coming to Albuquerque

New Mexico had some breaking news this past Sunday: former president, and current presidential candidate Donald J. Trump is coming to Albuquerque.

This will not be the first Trump rally in the Land of Enchantment. Back in 2019, Trump visited Rio Rancho. This year’s Halloween visit, scheduled this Thursday, is raising a number of eyebrows. Why visit a strongly blue state and overwhelmingly blue city? The rally will be held just five days before election day. And it is unusual for candidates to hold rallies so late unless they are targeted swing states.

Why New Mexico?

A few reasons present themselves as to why Trump chose Albuquerque. New Mexico is one of few minority-majority states in the US. Minorities are often stereotyped by liberals as naturally supportive of the Democratic party. However, this is not the case. In a two-party system, groups will always evade such stereotypes. And common political interests are more likely to lie along ideological rather than ethnic or racial lines.

Before I cast my vote, I looked into the Republican candidates running for federal and local levels. What I noticed in my research was that Republican candidates all stressed one thing in particular: immigration and border security. Yet, at the same time, New Mexican Hispanic support for Trump is quite high. A poll conducted by The Albuquerque Journal found that 41% of Hispanics support Trump. This is considerable, and has given Trump hope that he could possibly win New Mexico over.

What makes New Mexican Hispanic voters confusing for some is that they would vote for someone who is so staunchly anti-(illegal) immigration. Why vote for a candidate whose very rhetoric causes violence against migrants from Springfield, Ohio to Aurora, Colorado?

For one, many Hispanics in New Mexico are not immigrants to the US. New Mexico, as we know, used to be part of Mexico until the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, when the territory was acquired by the US. Thus, immigration may not be such a concern for this demographic since they never had to worry about crossing the border.

But this is also part of a national trend. A recent study found that Latina/o support for Trump grew considerably from 2016 to 2020. Latina support for Trump grew more rapidly than that among Latinos. Yet, New Mexico hasn’t gone red since 2004. It is unlikely to do so twenty years later.

Rally Optics and Election Trust

Aside from these statistical and demographic developments, there may be a more sinister reason why Trump is coming to Albuquerque.

Recently, Trump held a rally in Maddison Square Garden in New York. This is the same rally where conservative comedian Tony Hinchcliffe called Puerto Rico “a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean.”

As the rally went on, I came across a number of posts like this one:

 

Post by @realmichealross

View on Threads

 

Since taking office in 2016, Trump’s base has taken a liking to scrutinizing rally optics. In other words, they measure a candidate’s political support by how many people seem to attend their rallies.

For example, Trump’s packed Des Moines rally was contrasted with the meager reception that President Joe Biden’s campaign bus received in Arizona. This difference in optics was taken as a sign that Trump had the nation behind him, while nobody supported Biden.

This trend has continued into this year as well. In August, Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate Tim Walz touched down in Detroit. They were well-received with a considerable gathering. But Trump claimed that the photos of the crowds were AI-generated. The implication was that Harris is unpopular and willing to lie to hide it.

Critical commentators were quick to hint at the reasons behind this false claim. Trump was trying to create doubt in the upcoming election. Senator Bernie Sanders, for example, wrote,

If you can convince your supporters that thousands of people who attended a televised rally do not exist, it will not be hard to convince them that the election returns in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and elsewhere are ‘fake’ and ‘fraudulent.’

Another Stolen Election?

Trump’s modus operandi has changed a bit since 2019. But the overall strategy is much the same: depict yourself as authentically popular and the other candidate as unpopular. If rallies indicate voter support, may the most well-attended candidate win!

Trump’s visit to Madison Square Garden in New York and his upcoming rally in Albuquerque, New Mexico seem to be a development in this evolving strategy. Trump is not only trying to seem popular. He is trying to show that even in supposedly blue states and cities, he is a star. As this image is being concocted, he is conjuring up an image of Harris as not just less popular than him, but willing to lie to save face.

We must not underestimate the importance that media plays in election cycles these days. Media will affect what people write in on their ballots. But more importantly, media will drive how people respond to election results.

Trump’s base is already prone to believe that the election will be stolen if they lose. A recent Pew study found that 90% of Harris’s supporters are confident that the 2024 election will be free and fair. Only 57% of Trump’s supporters say the same. 61% of Harris supporters think it’s important for Harris to acknowledge Trump as the legitimate winner in the case of his victory. 32% of Trump supporters agree in the case of Harris’s victory. And Trump has not stopped appealing to this conspiratorial thinking since 2020. In a September 2024 Michigan rally, he said, “If I lose – I’ll tell you what, it’s possible. Because they cheat. That’s the only way we’re gonna lose, because they cheat.”

How to Stop the Stop the Steal

So, how can we stop the #stopthesteal from making a comeback? Politics today has a lot to do with optics. Though we as media consumers have little say over what goes viral and what does not, we can control how we respond to what we see. And we have some sway in how those in our lives respond, too.

By recognizing how politicians (Harris is not innocent from this) instrumentalize optics to benefit their cause, we can see through these narratives. We must stress that rally attendance does not signify voter support. Rally optics, just like political polls, only give us a provisional glimpse at how elections will turn out.

But even more importantly, we must highlight the importance of free and fair elections, and the peaceful transfer of power that should follow them. Already videos are surfacing of Americans blasting open mail-in ballot drop boxes and burning the contents inside. We have seen multiple assassination attempts and other kinds of political violence result from dangerous political rhetoric. We cannot stop the Stop the Steal crowd if they take up arms again. But we can certainly cultivate bastions of electoral trust and solidarity where we are.

As the eminent American political philosopher John Rawls put it, we must agree on “fair play.” The Constitution has laid out the terms of how elections play out. We must cast our votes, and accept whatever the results may be, even if we dislike them. I just pray that the Constitution is enough to hold this country together.

Why is Trump campaigning in NYC and Albuquerque? Because he’s NOT campaigning. He knows he’s losing. These are Insurrection 2.0 rallies. He’s pumping up his supporters for denial and violence.https://t.co/QKHfwNpXRp

— Martin Heinrich (@MartinHeinrich) October 28, 2024