Trump raises eyebrows with Democratic state blitz

Spend any time in a swing state in the closing weeks of a US election and it's hard to avoid the barrage of rallies, TV interviews and attack ads as candidates grasp for those final few undecided voters.

So when Republican nominee Donald Trump announced an expansion of his campaign map into "deep blue" Democratic real estate that he has virtually no chance of taking, political analysts wondered what he was up to.

Trump, 78, is in Aurora, Colorado on Friday and California's Coachella Valley on Saturday. Next week he heads to Chicago, Illinois and on October 27 he will appear at New York's iconic Madison Square Garden, home of the NBA's New York Knicks.

Colorado is the only one of those states to have voted Republican in a presidential election this century. It was the most competitive of the four in 2020, and it was still a cakewalk for Biden, who won by 13 points.

Meanwhile Trump and his Democratic opponent Kamala Harris are neck-and-neck in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada -- where a few thousand wavering voters could determine who gets the White House.

So why put in time that takes you away from the Americans who do the hiring and firing less than four weeks before November 5?

The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment but aides have pointed to a strategy of wooing voters in areas they say are hurt by failed Democratic policies.

- Optics and ego -

For Adrienne Uthe, the founder of Utah-based PR firm Kronus Communications, the sorties into Democratic territory are about nationwide optics and messaging, rather than a simple grab for local votes.

"He's not there to flip these states, he's there to fuel the narrative of a 'national movement' and energize his base where they feel like underdogs," she told AFP.

"Rallying in traditionally Democratic areas gives his supporters the thrill of 'enemy territory,' while allowing Trump to frame his campaign as transcending party lines."

Andrew Koneschusky, a political communications expert and former press secretary to Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer, agreed that Trump's strategists were thinking about "optics, symbolism and ego" rather than electoral math.

Trump has pushed exaggerated stories of migrant gangs running rampant in Aurora, and his aim in visiting is to transform the city into a "national battleground" on immigration, says the consultant.

Coachella, a three-hour drive from Mexico, offers the same opportunity and has the added advantage of looking like a bold, aggressive throw of the gauntlet in Harris's home state.

"New York is a real head-scratcher," Koneschusky told AFP. "But this choice may be a product of Trump's ego. He likely wants to orchestrate a spectacle at Madison Square Garden and demonstrate he can fill a 20,000-seat arena in a Democratic bastion."

Trump's obsession with his crowd sizes, in fact, is being offered by some Washington-watchers as the whole explanation for his idiosyncratic campaign strategy.

- Tired of Trump? -

The ex-president has reacted badly to Harris's packed rallies, inventing multiple conspiracy theories to dismiss them as fake, and his sensitivity has been mocked on the late night talk show circuit -- and by his predecessor, Barack Obama.

In a moment that defined September's presidential debate, the mercurial tycoon allowed himself to get riled by Harris claiming his rally speeches were so boring that his supporters were getting up and leaving before the end.

Images of empty seating even at the start of his rallies have been shared widely on social media, including footage of an event in Pennsylvania on Wednesday that showed large sections of the arena unfilled as Trump took the stage.

Tim Miller, who was communications director for Jeb Bush when he ran against Trump for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, believes people in swing states are tired of the Trump "shtick."

"And so he needs to go to these red areas of blue states -- or deep red states where people haven't seen him -- so that he can get the crowd size that he needs," said Miller on center-right outlet The Bulwark's podcast, which he hosts.

But Koneschusky, Schumer's former aide, says the nationwide focus is unlikely to sway voters in battleground states.

"He'd probably be better served to take up residence in Pennsylvania," he told AFP. "In the end, it's electoral math, not spectacle and theatrics, that usually determines the outcome of the election."