Former President Donald Trump. File
| Photo Credit: AP

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump will host a campaign rally in the predominantly Hispanic South Bronx neighbourhood of New York on May 23, targeting a Democratic stronghold as he tries to chip away at U.S. President Joe Biden’s support among voters of color.

Recent polls suggest Mr. Trump is gaining ground with Black and Hispanic voters, groups that traditionally have supported Democrats. Mr. Trump’s campaign sees an opportunity to grab enough of their votes to make a difference in battleground States in the November 5 election.

That is not the case with New York, which Mr. Trump lost by 23 percentage points in 2020 and has no chance of winning this year, political analysts say. But, a well-attended rally held in the city and covered by major TV networks could help project his message to Black and Hispanic voters nationwide.

Why Trump is trying to win over non-white voters

“I think it’s part of this larger narrative where he’s trying to chip away at Biden’s support amongst Black and Latino men, primarily,” said Christina Greer, an associate professor of political science at Fordham University. “By him going to the South Bronx, he can say ‘I’m talking to communities that Joe Biden is taking for granted’.”

Mr. Trump’s focus on non-white voters reflects both candidates’ efforts to look beyond their base in what national polls show to be a close re-match. Some 40% of registered voters in a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll said they would vote for Mr. Biden if the election were held today, with the same share picking Mr. Trump.

Mr. Trump won the U.S. presidency in 2016 with less support from Black and Hispanic voters than any president in at least 40 years, then made up ground with both groups in the 2020 race. In the New York Times/Siena College poll in March, he was selected by 23% of Black and 46% of Hispanic respondents in a one-on-one matchup with the current president. That is far higher than the 12% of Black and 32% of Hispanic voters than he won in 2020, according to Edison Research exit polls.

Political analysts have attributed Mr. Biden’s slipping support among non-white voters this election cycle in part to the outsized impact of inflation on people living paycheck to paycheck.

At Thursday’s rally in Crotona Park, Mr. Trump is expected to focus on the economy, crime and immigration – three main planks of his campaign. He will highlight inflation under Mr. Biden in particular, his campaign said.

Roughly 55% of Bronx County residents are Hispanic and about one-third are Black, according to 2022 census data. Mr. Biden won the county by 67.6 percentage points in 2020.

Biden on the offensive

Mr. Biden has had a flurry of actions and events focused on bolstering support among African American voters, including giving the commencement address at Morehouse College, where he noted the billions in funding his administration has granted to historically Black colleges and universities. He also has singled out Mr. Trump and other Republicans for attacking programmes aimed at improving diversity, equity and inclusion.

On Thursday, the Biden campaign released two new ads attacking Mr.Trump’s treatment of Black people.

Mr. Trump’s rally schedule has had to compete with his court appearances on criminal and civil charges. He is standing trial in New York on charges he falsified business records to hide a hush money payment to a porn star before the 2016 election. A verdict could come as early as next week.

In April, Mr. Trump made a campaign appearance at a convenience store in Harlem, New York, a predominantly Black neighbourhood in Manhattan that has historically voted for Democrats.

While speaking to a Black conservative group in South Carolina before the state’s primary election in February, Mr. Trump likened the four criminal cases against him to discrimination faced by Black Americans and said they had come to “embrace” his mug shots.

Mr. Trump’s legal challenges, including federal charges over his alleged efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss and his handling of classified documents, differ greatly from the historic inequities Black Americans have experienced in the criminal justice system.

Democratic U.S. Representative Ritchie Torres, who represents the Bronx, on Thursday said it was clear to New Yorkers in the borough that Mr. Trump put his self interests over their needs. “I’m confident the people of the Bronx are not going to buy the snake oil he’s selling,” Mr. Torres told MSNBC in an interview.