Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump will hold a campaign rally in Kinston, North Carolina on Wednesday, his second of two events in the state today.
Trump will speak from the Kinston Jet Center beginning at 7:00 p.m. Eastern Time. The rally can be viewed live in the embedded YouTube player via Right Side Broadcasting.
The states Trump has been focusing his time on this week are Florida, North Carolina and Ohio, three of the most significant in the 2016 election. Trump can’t win without the state of Florida, and he likely also cannot win without North Carolina, which is worth 15 electoral votes.
It’s also crucial that Trump spends as much time in the state as he can because its residents are already voting. Early voting in North Carolina is underway, and so far, Hillary Clinton appears to be in the lead. While the state doesn’t release information about precisely how many ballots have been cast for each candidate, the data they have provided shows that 47 percent of those who have voted early are registered Democrats, while only 28 percent of them are Republicans.
However, that isn’t to say Hillary Clinton necessarily has the state locked up, as in 2012, Barack Obama had a significant advantage in North Carolina’s early voting, only to lose the state to Mitt Romney by two percentage points.
The early voting race is much more narrow in Florida, with Republicans having the slight advantage. Thus far, approximately 665,000 Republicans have voted early in Florida compared to 658,000 Democrats. It remains to be seen, however, if all of those Republicans will actually vote for Donald Trump. In Real Clear Politics’ polling average, Hillary Clinton is ahead of Donald Trump in Florida by 1.8 percentage points.
On Thursday, Trump will head over to Ohio, holding back-to-back events in Springfield, Toledo and Geneva.