And yet, on Saturday, Trump is hosting a rally in Fairfield County, Conn., a county that Mitt Romney lost to Barack Obama by 11 percentage points, in a state that hasn’t voted Republican since 1988.
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It’s a move that is flummoxing and infuriating Republicans who believe Trump should be spending time and resources in winnable states, not in a place that few consider to be competitive.
“At this point, Florida looks in trouble, North Carolina looks in trouble, they don’t even know who their people are in Ohio,” said Charlie Harper, a prominent conservative writer who runs a think tank in Georgia, where Trump is sliding in the polls. “He can go have lunch in Connecticut and be home for supper, but the map is changing rapidly in the opposite direction. Hillary Clinton is not going to move in to defend Connecticut just because Trump went there.”
It’s unlikely she’ll need to, given the strong Democratic bent of the state, which has a Democratic governor, an entirely Democratic congressional delegation and voted for Obama by 18 percentage points in 2012. Former GOP Rep. Chris Shays of Connecticut has also recently endorsed her over Trump.
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