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It has been over three decades since a Republican carried New Jersey in a presidential election.
One has to go back to then-Vice President George H.W. Bush, who carried the state in the 1988 election on his way to winning the White House. Since then, Democrats have won the state eight straight times in presidential elections.
However, former President Donald Trump thinks he can clear the high hurdles he faces in the reliably blue state.
“We’re going to try and win the state of New Jersey. I want the people to know that I love it,” Trump predicted in a Friday morning local radio interview on New Jersey 105.1 in the Garden State. “You know, it’s not just going to be like, gee, maybe we can get close. We’re going to win it.”
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Former President Donald Trump predicts that he can flip blue state New Jersey red. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)
Trump added that New Jersey “is supposed to be a Democrat state. I think it’s going to flip to Republican.”
The former president spoke on the eve of returning to the Garden State.
“We have a tremendous rally and hope you’re all going to be there. It’s in Wildwood, New Jersey. It’s going to be a big crowd,” Trump touted on Friday.
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Wildwood, at the southern tip of the Jersey Shore, is part of the Garden State’s Cape May County, a heavily Republican county in a longtime blue state.
Trump held a rally in Wildwood in January 2020. However, Trump ended up losing New Jersey by 16 points to President Biden.
Four years earlier, he lost the state to 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton by 14 points.
President Donald Trump attends the “Keep America Great Rally” at the Wildwood Convention Center in Wildwood, New Jersey, on Jan. 28, 2020. (Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
For Trump, the weekend rally is a short distance from New York City, where he is spending his weekdays in court, making history as the first former or current president to stand trial in a criminal case.
Democrats do not appear to be taking Trump’s prediction very seriously.
Democratic Rep. Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey, a Biden surrogate, told reporters on Friday that “Jersey is not going to be a welcoming place for Trump.”
Additionally, Biden campaign communications director Michael Tyler noted that “Trump’s team is talking about New Jersey. They’re talking about holding concerts in Madison Square Garden to turn out voters in states like New York. I think here on planet earth in the Biden campaign, we’re going to remain laser focused on winning 270 electoral votes.”
Paul Steinhauser is a politics reporter based in New Hampshire.
