Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump will hold a campaign rally in Manchester, New Hampshire this afternoon, his first of three rallies on Friday.
Trump will speak from the Radisson Armory beginning at 12:30 p.m. Eastern Time. The rally can be viewed in the embedded YouTube player via Right Side Broadcasting.
The Republican nominee is headed to New Hampshire today well aware of the fact that winning the state’s four electoral votes could make or break the race for him. Trump’s pathway to 270 is extremely narrow, and even if he wins just about all the battleground states he needs, he will fall short of that number. If Trump wins all the states Mitt Romney did in 2012 and adds Florida, Ohio, Nevada, and Iowa, that would only put him at 265, five points short of victory.
From there, he has to pick off a state that’s currently leaning towards Hillary Clinton, with his only real options being Virginia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, or Colorado, all states that are very solidly blue at the moment. But there’s one more possible path: if Trump can win New Hampshire, plus the one electoral vote in Maine’s second district, that would put him at exactly 270 votes, and he would become the next president of the United States.
If that sounds like a ridiculous scenario, it seems that the campaign is certainly considering it because immediately after this rally in Manchester, Trump will be holding an event in Maine’s second congressional district, going directly after that one extra electoral vote. Maine is one of two states that splits its Electoral College votes by district, so Trump and Clinton could theoretically both win a single point from Maine rather than both candidates winning two. The other state to do this is Nevada.
Trump will conclude his Friday with a campaign stop in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and on Saturday, he pays a visit to Golden, Colorado.