Donald Trump campaign gives up on three states

| 3:00 pm EDT September 6, 2024
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Earlier this week Palmer Report pointed out that the Donald Trump campaign was giving up and pulling out of New Hampshire. This is significant because while the state was a long shot for Trump, his campaign has long viewed it as a fallback option. If Trump lost one of the main swing states, perhaps he could make up for it by pulling off an upset in New Hampshire.

Now it turns out Trump is giving up and pulling out of three states. He’s bailing on New Hampshire, Virginia, and Minnesota. Trump was never likely to win any of these states. But his campaign viewed them as being just competitive enough that an upset might be possible in each of them. No more. It’s even worse for him than that. While Trump hasn’t pulled out of Michigan or Wisconsin, he’s now spending the minimum in those states, suggesting he doesn’t think he can win them either.

This means Trump is indeed pursuing the strategy that I laid out in my Thursday morning column: he’s trying to win the Electoral College by winning Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Nevada. This is a dangerous strategy for him, because it means Kamala Harris can defeat him simply by winning any one of those three states. And if she does, Trump no longer has any fallback scenario.

Given that Trump is tied in North Carolina and only slightly behind in Pennsylvania and Nevada, he still has a path to victory. But it’s a very narrow one. When there are still sixty days to go and a presidential candidate is giving up on all pathways to 270 except for one, it speaks volumes about how bad off that candidate is. Even as this plays out, Trump is still mostly off the campaign trail while he licks his wounds and complains about sharks. Now is our chance to run up the score.