Donald Trump will be traveling to Georgia on Saturday to hold a rally in support of Republican Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler as they fight to keep their seats in a pair of January runoff elections.
While the stated intent of these rallies is to help Republicans maintain slim control of the United States Senate, there is evidence that Trump’s visit to Georgia could actually help Democrats.
As MSNBC’s Jason Johnson pointed out on Saturday, data shows that – at least in the closing weeks of the 2020 campaign – Trump actually underperformed in counties where he held rallies.
“We’ve got research that tells us that Trump showing up actually harms him,” Johnson said. “We’ve got a graphic here that shows Trump has actually performed worse in counties where he [held rallies].”
Video:
Trump is headed to Georgia for a MAGA rally, even as data shows that these types of events help Democrats. #amjoy pic.twitter.com/SVWPHmGsF2
— PoliticusUSA (@politicususa) December 5, 2020
Johnson said:
I’m going to paraphrase Charlie Daniels here. Trump went down to Georgia because he saw an election he wanted to steal. He was in a bind because he was way behind and he was willing to cut a deal. … Look, we’ve got research that tells us that Trump showing up actually harms him. We’ve got a graphic here that shows Trump has actually performed worse in counties where he [held rallies]. What do you think his motivation is for showing up in Valdosta, Georgia when it seems like it’s going to hurt Loeffler and Perdue?
Trump rallies largely help Democrats
The NBC News data cited by Jason Johnson on Saturday found that Donald Trump’s rallies may have given Democrats a boost in the closing days of the 2020 campaign.
“Comparing Trump campaign stops over the last two weeks of the race to election results shows that in the overwhelming majority of cases, Trump underperformed his 2016 margins in the counties he visited, in some cases by large amounts,” NBC News reported.
The analysis continued, “In five counties that Trump visited he saw better results than he did in 2016, but in the remaining 25 his margins of victory got smaller, his margin of defeat grew or the county flipped Democratic.”
In other words, Trump rallies actually appeared to help Democrats more than 80 percent of the time – not a comforting statistic for Georgia Republicans as the outgoing president heads to the state on Saturday.
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Sean Colarossi currently resides in Cleveland, Ohio. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and was an organizing fellow for both of President Obama’s presidential campaigns. He also worked with Planned Parenthood as an Affordable Care Act Outreach Organizer in 2014, helping northeast Ohio residents obtain health insurance coverage.
