Former President Donald Trump has held a rally in deep blue California as part of an unorthodox campaign move in the final stretch of the neck-and-neck race for the US presidential election.

The Saturday night event near the Coachella Valley — best known for its annual music festival — took place just 22 days before the Nov. 5 vote.

The latter part of the election is typically reserved for frenzied visits to the most competitive battleground states, which this year include Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona and Nevada.

That makes Trump’s stop in California — a Democratic stronghold that will almost certainly vote overwhelmingly for Vice President Kamala Harris — atypical. Harris, born and raised in the state, previously served as attorney general of California and district attorney of San Francisco, and remains very popular there.

In the last presidential election, in 2020, Trump lost to Democrat Joe Biden in California by almost 30 percentage points.

Trump said at the rally: “The radical left Democrats destroyed this state, but we’re going to save it, and we’re going to make it better than ever.”

“You definitely had someone here who was terrible, Kamala,” he continued. “And now she wants to destroy our country.”

The former president then launched into a famous stump speech that focused on misleading claims regarding migrant crime in the US.

Trump called migration the most important issue of the election, despite the fact that polls show that the economy is the biggest issue for most voters.

Why visit California?

The visit to the state is widely seen as an effort to shore up broader Republican support. This is especially necessary in six key races for the California House of Representatives.

Control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate – the two chambers of the US Congress – is up for grabs this election season. And certain congressional districts in California are deeply divided between Republicans and Democrats.

A victory in the six competitive House races could help Republicans maintain their hold on the House.

Going to California gives Trump the “opportunity to penetrate and leverage this large population of Trump supporters,” Tim Lineberger, communications director for Trump’s 2016 campaign in Michigan and worked in the former president’s administrations, told me. to the Associated Press news agency.

He “comes here and activates that,” Lineberger added.

This move could also be an attempt to increase Trump’s final vote tally. In the US, the winner of the presidential race is determined by the Electoral College, a weighted voting system in which states award electors to candidates based on state-level votes.

Nearly all states award all their electors in a winner-takes-all system: even if a candidate wins by a small margin in a given state, he receives all the electors.

That means a candidate can lose in the general popular vote but win in the Electoral College system, as Trump did in 2016. However, in 2020 he lost to Biden in both measures.

That he never won the popular vote remains a sore subject for the former Republican president. California, with its nearly 40 million residents, offers the opportunity to find supporters who might otherwise not find it worth going to the polls.

“I believe Donald Trump is coming to California because he not only wants to win in the Electoral College, but he also wants to win the popular vote,” Jim Brulte, a former chairman of the California Republican Party, told the Associated Press.

Blitz on the battlefield

In fairness, Trump has sandwiched his California visit between a stop in Nevada on Saturday and a rally in Arizona on Sunday, two states more typical of the final weeks of a presidential campaign.

In Nevada, Trump attended a roundtable with Latino voters as his campaign sought to respond to signs that Latino men are increasingly turning away from Democrats.

For her part, Harris visited North Carolina, which was recently devastated by Hurricane Helene. She said her visit was “primarily to see how they are doing in the aftermath of the hurricane.”

Harris would also promote her plan for an “opportunity economy” and meet with leaders from the Black community. Trump narrowly won North Carolina in 2020, but the eastern state is leaning Democratic in some recent polls, buoyed by its large college-educated and Black population.

Earlier in the day, Harris announced the results of a health examination. It says she has “the physical and mental resilience necessary to successfully discharge the duties of the presidency.”

Releasing health exams has long been a norm for US presidential candidates, with Harris quick to underline that the 78-year-old Trump has so far failed to do so.

“It is clear to me that he and his team do not want the American people to really see what he is doing and whether or not he is qualified to serve as president of the United States,” she said. reporters.

Trump’s campaign has maintained that the former president “voluntarily released updates from his personal physician” and from the doctor who treated him after an assassination attempt in July.

“All have concluded that he is in perfect and excellent health to be commander in chief,” his campaign spokesman said, charging that Harris “does not have the staying power” of Trump.