The short-short version

Trump is telling the truth here. His campaign did indeed blanket battleground states, focusing particularly on the Rust Belt, Florida, North Carolina, Nevada, and Colorado. He also posted an incredibly impressive pace, particularly at the end of the campaign, peaking at almost 3.4 events per day on 7 November.

The Trump Rally Map

Looking for the raw data? You can grab it over at our Datasets & Downloads page.

The Trump Rally Timeline

Takeaways

• The Donald logged some serious miles. It’s terrifying impressive, actually. Trump may be many things, but lazy is evidently not one of them.
  • He had 3 days where he averaged more than 3 events/day (6-8 November, unsurprisingly). There were an additional 12 where he topped a weekly average of 2 events/day (30 October through 5 November).
  • From the Iowa caucus (1 Feb) through Election Day, Trump had a rolling average of 1 event/day or better in 124 of the 282 days (44%).
• Once the primaries were wrapped up, Trump blanketed the swing states. We’ve used Cruz & Kasich’s resignations on 3 & 4 May as the point after which Trump was focusing exclusively on the General Election. The man was focused. Or his travel strategists were. Which really amounts to the same thing.
  • Between clinching & Election Day, Trump held 93 of his 150 events in Colorado (10), Florida (25), Michigan (6), Nevada (5), North Carolina (18), Ohio (15), Pennsylvania (14), & Wisconsin (5). Remember, this was after every one of those primaries, so these were general election rallies.
  • In the same time period, Trump visited the non-contested states of California (5), Texas (3), Montana (1), Alabama (0), and New York (0) a combined 10 times (and CA and NY still had upcoming primaries).

  Trump during the General Election
  Rank	State	# events	Pending primary
  1	Florida	25	N
  2	N Carolina	18	N
  3	Ohio	15	N
  4	Pennsylvania	14	N
  5	Colorado	10	N
  6	New Hampshire	8	N
  7	Iowa	7	N
  T-8	California	6	Y
  T-8	Michigan	6	N
  T-8	Virginia	6	N
  T-11	Nevada	5	N
  T-11	Wisconsin	5	N
  T-13	Arizona	4	N
  T-13	Maine	4	N
  T-15	Texas	3	N
  T-15	Washington	3	Y
  16	New Mexico	2	Y
  T-17	Connecticut	1	N
  T-17	Georgia	1	N
  T-17	Indiana	1	N
  T-17	Mississippi	1	N
  T-17	Montana	1	Y
  T-17	Nebraska	1	Y
  T-17	Oregon	1	Y
  T-17	W Virginia	1	Y
  T-27	Alabama	0	N
  T-27	Alaska	0	N
  T-27	Arkansas	0	N
  T-27	DC	0	N
  T-27	Delaware	0	N
  T-27	Hawai’i	0	N
  T-27	Idaho	0	N
  T-27	Kansas	0	N
  T-27	Kentucky	0	N
  T-27	Louisiana	0	N
  T-27	Maryland	0	N
  T-27	Massachussetts	0	N
  T-27	Missouri	0	N
  T-27	New Jersey	0	N
  T-27	New York	0	N
  T-27	N Dakota	0	N
  T-27	Oklahoma	0	N
  T-27	Rhode Island	0	N
  T-27	S Carolina	0	N
  T-27	S Dakota	0	N
  T-27	Tennessee	0	N
  T-27	Utah	0	N
  T-27	Vermont	0	N
  T-27	Wyoming	0	N

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• Trump went 6-for-8 in those key states listed above (losing Colorado and Nevada). If he goes 4-6, he probably loses the election (depending on which two additional he lost).
• The crowd effect (warning: wild psychological speculation!). One can easily imagine how looking out at packed crowds every day (or multiple times every day) for over a year could give Trump an over-inflated view of his own popularity.
  • This could have feed into an already pretty narcissistic personality and possibly helps explain the refusal to believe well-established evidence about the size of the inauguration crowd or the lack of widespread voter fraud.
• The “Thank You” Tour feels like a campaign that wanted to consolidate its legitimacy as fast as possible through acclamation.

What’s next?

Sure, The Donald was a busy man (and it’s really unusual to hold these kind of rallies after the election), but how unusual was he compared to his peers during the campaign?

The obvious follow up to this study is to compare our Trump dashboard with campaign rally data from the other party winners from the past several elections (Cliton 2016, Obama & Romney 2012, Obama & McCain 2008, Kerry & Bush 2004, etc). The major limitation will be available information. Crowd sizes will likely be impossible to compare, so we might just have to go with “number of major events.” Even the definition of “rally” might be a bit hard to pin down.