Donald Trump bets on late trips to New Mexico and Virginia (Democratic)

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) Donald Trump is traveling to New Mexico and Virginia in the final days of his campaign, taking a risky detour from the seven battleground states to spend time in places where Republican candidates have presidential election have not won in decades.

The former president campaigned in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on Thursday and was scheduled to travel to Salem, Virginia, on Saturday.

Team Trump projects optimism based in part on early voting numbers and believes he can be competitive against Democrat Kamala Harris in the two New Mexico states in particular, if he wins the key Nevada states and Arizona. This hope comes even though neither New Mexico nor Virginia have had a Republican candidate in the White House since George W. Bush in 2004.

Over the past few months in particular, the battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin have seen a steady stream of candidate visits, and residents were bombarded with political ads on billboards, televisions and smartphones. In the past two weeks alone, presidential and vice presidential candidates have made 21 appearances in Pennsylvania, 17 in Michigan and 13 in North Carolina.

In the other 43 states, a candidate's visit is an exciting new development.

Trump retains fervent support groups, even in states that vote overwhelmingly against him, and he can easily fill his rallies with enthusiastic supporters.

He has recently taken other detours from states most in play, holding rallies at New York's Madison Square Garden and Coachella, Calif., in states even more solidly Democratic than New Mexico and Virginia. The events satisfied Trump's claims that he can win both states, but also aimed to attract maximum media attention as his campaign seeks to reach voters who don't follow political news closely.

Trump also showed up in solidly Republican Montana, and Trump and Harris campaigned on the same day last week in Texas, which Democrats last won in 1976.

These trips had other purposes, such as highlighting important issues in a state or supporting candidates for the House or Senate.

Trump said in Albuquerque he could win the state as long as the election was fair, repeating lies about past elections being rigged.

If we could get God to come down from heaven, he could be the vote counter and we could win, Trump said. He added that he was visiting New Mexico because it was good for my credentials with Hispanic voters.

Trump's strategy carries risks.

After losing to Trump in 2016, Democrat Hillary Clinton was criticized for traveling to Arizona late in the campaign instead of spending time in Wisconsin, Michigan or Pennsylvania, states that ultimately decided this election. Arizona is a battleground today, but it wasn't considered particularly competitive eight years ago, when it voted for Trump by a margin of 4 percentage points.

I don't think there's a strategy, said Bob Shrum, a longtime Democratic political consultant who has worked on many presidential campaigns and now directs the Center for the Political Future at the University of Southern California . I think he insisted on doing it. This doesn't make any sense.

What you need to know about the 2024 elections

New Mexico shutdown brings Trump to border state

The planned visit to Albuquerque brings Trump and his immigration stance to a border state with the nation's highest concentration of Latino voters, highlighting the campaign for Hispanic supporters.

About 44% of New Mexico's voting-age population identifies as Hispanic. Many have centuries-old ties to Mexican and Spanish colonies, while the state has a lower share of foreign-born residents than the national average.

At the same time, federal and local authorities in New Mexico are facing a surge in migrant deaths along the U.S. border with Mexico.

Trump's visit has implications for a swing congressional district that stretches from Albuquerque to the border with Mexico. It is now held by a Democrat as Republicans seek to maintain their narrow majority in the House. Immigration was a major issue in the race.

Also on the ballot, Democratic Sen. Martin Heinrich is seeking a third term against Republican Nella Domenici. She is the daughter of the late Republican Sen. Pete Domenici, who served six terms, from 1973 to 2009 and was the last New Mexico Republican elected to the Senate.

Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. remains on the ballot in New Mexico, and campaign signs supporting Kennedy appeared in the capital Santa Fe in late October, about two months after the withdrawal of Kennedy's race and his support for Trump.

New Mexico voters defeated Trump twice in elections, and Democrats hold every statewide elected office, all three congressional seats, and majorities in the state House and Senate .

Virginia was once a battlefield

While Virginia was considered a battleground as recently as 2012, it has tilted toward Democrats over the past decade, particularly in the populated suburbs of northern Virginia.

Trump lost the state to Clinton in 2016 and to Democrat Joe Biden in 2020. This year, Democrats and their allies in the presidential race spent nearly twice as much as Republicans on ads in Virginia, according to the data, although this pales in comparison to the expenditure. in the battleground states.

We have a real chance, Trump said in a phone call to a Richmond-area rally Saturday.

Trump, while in Virginia, will likely speak about Wednesday's Supreme Court decision leaving in place a voter registration purge that the state says is intended to prevent people who are not U.S. citizens from voting.

The High Court, despite dissents from the three liberal justices, granted an emergency appeal from Virginia's Republican administration led by Governor Glenn Youngkin.

Speaking to Fox News' Bret Baier on Wednesday night, Youngkin said that from what he sees on the field, Virginia is far more competitive than any of the experts would have believed.

He noted that two years after Biden won by 10 percentage points in 2020, he won the governorship.

Virginians are ready to find strength in the White House, he said.

Susan Swecker, chair of the Virginia Democratic Party, said Trump's planned visit to Salem on Saturday would only widen Harris' lead in the state.

Kamala Harris will win Virginia convincingly, as he knows he will, and any visit from this deranged madman will only widen the margin, Swecker said.

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Associated Press writers Jill Colvin in New York, Morgan Lee in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Olivia Diaz in Richmond, Virginia, contributed to this report.

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