Trump Campaign Says Nearly 40% of Audience at His South Carolina Rally Were Dems, Independents
President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign suggested Monday that more than 15,000 people who attended the president’s rallies so far this year were Democrats and independents.
Roughly 16 percent of attendees at a rally in North Charleston, South Carolina, were black, 28 percent of the audience didn’t vote in 2016, and nearly 40 percent of them were either Democrats or independents, the Washington Examiner reported, citing campaign sources.
“We know from data gathered from rallies that a significant percentage of rally registrants and attendees have voted infrequently in federal elections, but they are motivated to come out to see President Trump,” campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh told the Examiner.
“We also know that the president’s record of accomplishment on behalf of all Americans appeals to a wide swath of voters, including men and women, in all demographics, in all regions,” he said.
“He also speaks to the ‘forgotten Americans’ who politicians have left behind for decades.”
Murtaugh has not responded to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for data breaking down the percentage of people who were Democrats vs. those who identified as independents.
Data also show that 18,500 of the 67,000 people who attended Trump rallies over the last two months — or about 28 percent — were Democrats and independents.
“It is definitely a big deal,” Trump campaign pollster John McLaughlin told the Examiner.
Campaign manager Brad Parscale explained in a “60 Minutes” interview in October how the president manages to collect identifying information on voters.
Most of the campaign’s success was in matching individual preferences with ad content or microtargeting his constituents.
The campaign changed “language, words, colors, changing things because certain people like a green button better than a blue button,” Parscale told CBS’s Lesley Stahl, adding that the campaign tested who would like what type of ad.
Monday’s Washington Examiner report comes after Democratic presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden won 10 Super Tuesday races in February.
South Carolina was effectively Biden’s Maginot line, or the blue wall upon which he staked his much of his 2020 presidential campaign.
Biden outpaced Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont with a projected 60 percent of the vote to take control of at least 20 of South Carolina’s 54 pledged delegates.
South Carolina was the first time in the former Delaware senator’s three presidential runs that he won a state primary or caucus.
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