Donald Trump looks to please white, small-town Wisconsin rally By Reuters
Written by Gram Slattery
MOSINEE, Wis. (Reuters) – Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump heads to Wisconsin, a battleground state that could decide the election, for a rally on Saturday as he tries to shore up support from a key part of his base: workers and rural residents. they are white.
The former president has seen his support decline among the majority of the population since his Democratic rival in the Nov. 5 election, Vice President Kamala Harris, replaced President Joe Biden in the Democratic primary over the summer.
Trump is scheduled to speak at 1 p.m. (1800 GMT) in Mosinee, a city of about 4,500 people. The town is close to Wausau, a small city of about 40,000 people, but several hours from the state's most populous centers, which are Milwaukee and Madison.
Marathon County, where Mosinee is located, has often been politically competitive, having voted for Democratic nominee Barack Obama in 2008. Since then, the district has swung in the right direction, favoring Trump in 2016 and 2020, both about 18 times.
Nationally, Harris leads Trump among Hispanic voters by 13 percentage points, according to the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll, conducted in August, while Biden led that number by five points in May. He also increased his support among black Americans, surpassing Biden by seven points among those people.
But he hasn't moved the needle among white voters, those polls show. Whites without a college degree, long part of Trump's coalition, still favor the former president by 25 points, according to the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll. They favored Trump by 29 points when he was running with Biden.
That strength among white voters represents a bright spot in Trump's election, and several Trump advisers and allies have told Reuters in recent weeks that maintaining the former president's boundaries in that area will be crucial if he is to defeat Harris.
That's especially true in the northern “Rust Belt” states, Wisconsin included, which is white and largely rural. Trump relied heavily on these voters as he swept Rust Belt states en route to his 2016 victory over Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
Biden won the White House in 2020 in part by returning some of these voters to the Democratic Party.
Although the Trump campaign has identified Hispanics and Black men as key growth areas for the Republican Party, much of Trump's campaigning in recent weeks has taken place in small towns and cities in the Rust Belt.
Trump's opponent, Ohio US Senator JD (NASDAQ: ) Vance, is expected to hit hard in rural areas of the Rust Belt in the final weeks before the election, two Trump advisers told Reuters.
