By Helen Coster and Nathan Layne
NEW YORK (Reuters) -A few thousand Donald Trump supporters gathered on Thursday in a New York park in the mainly Hispanic and Black neighborhood of the South Bronx for a campaign rally highlighting his effort to chip away at President Joe Biden’s base among minority voters.
Recent polls suggest the Republican presidential candidate is gaining ground with Blacks and Hispanics, who have traditionally supported Democrats and were critical to Biden’s win in 2020. Trump’s campaign sees a chance to grab enough of their votes to make the difference in swing states in the Nov. 5 election.
That is not the case with New York, which Trump lost by 23 percentage points in 2020 and has no chance of winning this year, political analysts say. But a well-attended rally in the city and covered by major TV networks could help project his message to Black and Hispanic voters nationwide.
“I think it’s part of this larger narrative where he’s trying to chip away at Biden’s support amongst Black and Latino men, primarily,” said Christina Greer, an associate professor of political science at Fordham University. “By him going to the South Bronx, he can say, ‘I’m talking to communities that Joe Biden is taking for granted.'”
Roughly 55% of Bronx County residents are Hispanic and about one-third are Black, according to 2022 census data.
Trump’s focus on minority voters reflects both candidates’ efforts to look beyond their base in what national polls show to be a close re-match. Some 40% of registered voters in a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll said they would vote for Biden if the election were held today, with the same share picking Trump.
Trump won the U.S. presidency in 2016 with less support from Black and Hispanic voters than any president in at least 40 years, then made up ground with both groups in the 2020 race.
In a New York Times/Siena College poll in March, Trump was selected by 23% of Black and 46% of Hispanic respondents in a one-on-one matchup with Biden. That is far higher than the 12% of Black and 32% of Hispanic voters Trump won in 2020, according to Edison Research exit polls.
Political analysts have attributed Biden’s slipping support among voters of color this election cycle in part to the outsized impact of inflation on people living paycheck to paycheck.
By early evening, a few thousand attendees had gathered at Crotona Park for Trump’s speech, scheduled for 6 p.m. ET. The crowd was more racially mixed than his typical rallies, which are predominantly white. Supporters wore baseball caps with pro-Trump slogans like “Trump Was Right” and “Ultra MAGA.”
CONCERNS ABOUT ECONOMY, MIGRATION
Ed Rosa, who made the short trip from the North Bronx, said he considers his vote for Biden in 2020 to be a mistake and plans to back Trump in November. He said the Democratic Party has “become too socialist” and he is worried about the economy and immigrants coming over the southern border.
“For 50 years I was a Democrat and switched in the last three to four years,” said Rosa, 60, whose family hails from Puerto Rico.
Biden has had a flurry of actions and events focused on bolstering support among African American voters. He has singled out Trump and other Republicans for attacking programs aimed at improving diversity, equity and inclusion.
On Thursday, the Biden campaign released a pair of TV and radio ads highlighting Trump’s past treatment of Black people. These included his false claims that Barack Obama, the first African American president, was not born in the U.S. and his calls for the execution of a group of Black and Hispanic teens who were convicted but later exonerated of raping a white woman jogging in New York’s Central Park in 1989.
Janiyah Thomas, Black media director for the Trump campaign, said in a statement that Biden was trying to divert attention from “terrible policies that are hurting our community” and noted that as a senator Biden helped advance a bipartisan crime bill in 1994 that led to more Black men being locked up.
Trump’s rally schedule has had to compete with his court appearances on criminal and civil charges. He is standing trial in New York on charges he falsified business records to hide a hush money payment to a porn star before the 2016 election. A verdict could come as early as next week.
In April, Trump made a campaign appearance at a convenience store in Harlem, New York, a predominantly Black neighborhood in Manhattan that has historically voted for Democrats.
(Reporting by Helen Coster in New York and Nathan Layne in Wilton, Connecticut; Additional reporting by Susan Heavey in Washington; Editing by Colleen Jenkins, Daniel Wallis and Cynthia Osterman)
