Over Half of Attendees at Trump’s Minnesota Rally Were Not Republicans: RNC

President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at Duluth International Airport in Duluth, Minnesota on Sept. 30, 2020. Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said Thursday that President Donald Trump continues to attract new voters from outside his base, citing figures from the president’s rally in Minnesota showing that 60 percent of the attendees weren’t Republican.

“Our data from the Duluth Rally shows @realDonaldTrump is still bringing in tons of new voters,” McDaniel wrote in a message on social media, noting also that 20.9 percent of those at the Duluth rally identified as Democrats.

Other figures cited by McDaniel were that 8.4 percent of attendees have not voted in the last four elections and that 17.2 percent did not vote in 2016.

Trump lost Minnesota to Hillary Clinton in 2016 by about 1.5 percent, or fewer than 45,000 votes. The Trump campaign is hopeful that he can flip the state in the upcoming election, with the figures cited by McDaniel reinforcing this view.

A recent MPR News/Star Tribune/KARE-11 Minnesota Poll, released Sunday, found that around 8 percent of likely voters in Minnesota said they are undecided, while 2 percent said they would vote for another candidate. With the poll putting Democrat nominee Joe Biden ahead of Trump by 6 points, the battle for the undecided demographic is a key one for the president.

Nathan Gonzales, the editor and publisher of Inside Elections, a nonpartisan election analysis website, told MinnPost in an interview that he believes Minnesota is within Trump’s reach and he “might be able to” to flip the state.

Preya Samsundar, an RNC spokesperson, told MinnPost that she sees evidence Trump’s chances in Minnesota are good.

“We’re seeing the tides turning. There’s a mass exodus of Democrats. There has been for a long time,” she told the outlet.

Trump hit the campaign trail in Minnesota on Wednesday, claiming a win in Tuesday’s first presidential debate against Biden and framing his bid for re-election as a values-based clash between freedom and socialism.

“I’m not just running against Joe Biden,” Trump said at the Duluth rally. “I’m running against the corrupt far-left media, socialists, and communists, and the Democrat Party, and the special interests who’ve made a living bleeding our country dry.”

President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at the Duluth International Airport in Duluth, Minnesota, on Sept. 30, 2020. Stephen Maturen/Getty Images

At the rally, Trump denounced Antifa—a far-left anarcho-communist group that has been involved in rioting across the United States in recent months—and pointed out how Biden called Antifa “just an idea.”

“Ideas don’t assault cops and they don’t burn down buildings,” Trump said. “Antifa is a domestic terrorist organization.”

Mimi Nguyen Ly contributed to this report.