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Pictures of the world’s largest retirement community should worry Donald Trump.
The Villages, a sprawling 55+ community in Florida, is big enough to be considered its own town. It is also one of the fastest growing in the US, home to more than 100,000 people.
In 2016, American retirees helped propel Trump to electoral victory. It is estimated that a quarter of the country’s voters this time are over 65 years old.
An estimated one-quarter of American voters in this year’s election are over 65.
So the news footage of people in 500 golf carts parading through The Villages, heading to deliver their ballots for Joe Biden, would have been a startling clock at Trump campaign headquarters.
Pollsters say Trump’s handling of the coronavirus, a disease that threatens the elderly more than most, has caused a drop in support for him among older voters. How can the president protect them when he can’t even protect himself, they ask?
It’s no wonder then that the president’s first post-COVID-19 campaign event is in Florida.
Authorized to resume the campaign in person by his doctor, the president will hold the Make America Great Again rally in Orlando that he was forced to cancel when he was admitted to the hospital.
In recent days, Trump has seemed energetic, almost euphoric about his recovery and with a real urgency to get out there and campaign.
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After Florida on Monday, he will hold rallies in Pennsylvania on Tuesday and in Iowa on Wednesday. From the high-level vote to the rusty belt of blue-collar workers and the rural Midwest, the shape of your campaign is dictated by the image the polls are painting.
Trump won Florida by 100,000 votes out of nine million in 2016. Polls show a close race this time.
Trump won Pennsylvania by less than 50,000 in 2016 and polls now have Biden winning.
In Iowa, a state that Trump won by 10 percentage points in 2016, he is shoulder to shoulder with Biden.
National polls look increasingly bleak for Trump, but if 2016 taught us anything, it’s that polls can’t necessarily be trusted on Election Day. It is those oscillating states that will be decisive.
The Villages in Florida is a 55+ community
Trump says he’s seeing a different set of opinion polls, showing he’s doing well, and that he feels the momentum behind him this time is even greater than four years ago.
It is a fundamental week. Trump’s election to the Supreme Court, Amy Coney Barrett, begins the confirmation process on Capitol Hill, a significant and controversial moment for the United States.
Election Day is only three weeks away, but the moment of truth has come. Americans are voting early in their hundreds of thousands. The verdict of many on the Trump presidency has already been delivered.
