Donald Trump Faltering? Die-Hard Fans Refuse to Buy It
"In the campaign’s last weeks, at such rallies, Mr. Trump is sealed in a hermetic bubble with his most fervent supporters. They are people passionate enough to wait hours to attend a rally where the candidate and the crowds draw energy and affirmation from each other, while dismissing any discouraging information."
“I don’t believe anything the media says,” said Brad Chilson, 47, a truck driver from Bradford County, Pa., who waited hours with his wife outside the 8,000-seat Mohegan Sun Arena in Wilkes-Barre for Mr. Trump. “Look at the turnout we’ve got here.”
“I think the state of Pennsylvania, we’re going to win so big,” he said. A New York Times polling average shows Mrs. Clinton 7.2 percentage points ahead in the state.
“Everybody in Pennsylvania wants Trump, you know,” he said. “We get crowds like this everywhere.” He boasted of a rally planned for Florida with an expected 25,000 people.
As he spoke, Katie Packer, a strategist for Mitt Romney in 2012, posted a photograph on Twitter, of 30,000 people at an Ohio rally four years ago a week before Mr. Romney’s defeat. “None of the Trump crowds so far in the general election surpass what we regularly had in ’12,” Ms. Packer wrote. “They are so naïve.”