Trump's dominating the news again. Maybe that's good news for Harris.

His MSG rally shows signs of going viral.

There was no escaping Donald Trump yesterday.

I mean, literally in my case. I live close enough to Madison Square Garden, where Trump held a controversial rally yesterday, that I was in the area cordoned off by police barricades. The rally went on all day, with dozens of warm-up speakers, and you could hear random bursts of cheering pretty much from when I woke up. I had a lot of work to do, and I decided to have as normal a day as possible, neither locking myself in — I took breaks for coffee, lunch, dinner, and to buy beer — nor trying to sneak my way closer to MSG without a ticket or a press credential.

Having the Garden dressed up in the red, white, and blue colors typically used for the New York Rangers¹ was a little strange. So was seeing the various Rangers/Knicks bars in my neighborhood populated by people wearing MAGA hats². Some went further than others in welcoming them with Trump paraphernalia or by playing the speech instead of the NFL games they’d usually show on a Sunday. The vibe of the neighborhood is very much “open to all comers come hell or high water,” and from the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show to a seemingly endless series of Phish concerts one summer, I’m used to it being inundated by fans of various teams, acts or causes that I have no particular interest in.³

But there are plenty of Trump fans in New York City and the surrounding areas.⁴ In 2020, his top county among the five NYC boroughs was Queens County — his 36th best county in the country overall — although if you combined New York City into one county, it would rank 5th in the nation. Add on Nassau and Suffolk counties, and Trump got 1.4 million votes between Long Island and the five boroughs. And if the polls are right, Trump will make significant gains in the city this year.

Some observers have criticized Trump for wasting a day in New York City instead of Georgia or Pennsylvania. He almost certainly isn’t going to win the state, though our forecast shows him gaining 7 points in New York from 2020; it will possibly be his biggest improvement on the map. But I don’t think that critique really holds water. Campaigns are highly nationalized, and by holding a rally in the media’s backyard — it’s a 10-minute walk down 8th Ave from MSG to the New York Times building — Trump ensured he’d get plenty of attention.

The question is whether it’s the sort of attention that Trump wants.

Press coverage of the rally was harsh. The New York Times gave its liberal critics the sort of headline they’ve been pining for — “A Closing Carnival of Grievances, Misogyny and Racism.” Even Reuters, typically known for its reserved, neutral headlines, went with “Trump headlines Madison Square Garden rally after vulgar, racist remarks from allies.” The comedian Tony Hinchcliffe called Puerto Rico a "floating island of garbage," a remark that even the Trump campaign and Florida Senator Rick Scott quickly distanced themselves from. Rudy Giuliani said Harris was "on the side of the terrorists" in the Middle East. Another speaker called Harris “the devil”.

Do swing voters care about New York Times headlines? Absolutely not, which is why it’s strange that the Times’s critics are so obsessed with them. But there’s some initial evidence that the rally is drawing broader attention: today and yesterday are the top days of Google search traffic for Trump since the second assassination attempt against him in September. 

This data, from Google Trends, took a little while to put together⁵. But I think it was worthwhile because it shows off the degree to which the campaign has really been dictated by major events that occurred earlier on in the race. And in particular, one major event: the first assassination attempt against Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania. My view is that the attempted assassination is of underrated importance in assessing the trajectory of the race, in part because it occurred amid a number of other major events (Biden dropping out and the Republican National Convention) that are hard to disaggregate. But Trump’s favorability ratings rose by a net of about 4 points after the assassination attempt to the highest level they’ve been in years and have more or less held there since. If the race is as close as polls show, the sympathy it generated might be enough to make a difference.

Meanwhile, the convention speeches for Harris and Trump only produced small spikes in search traffic. In a 24/7 news environment, conventions don’t generate news, and the speeches are usually too canned and constrained to create viral moments (though Harris’s was bolder than most). No wonder convention bounces aren’t what they once were. 

But the MSG rally does show some signs of going viral. Google searches for Hinchliffe have — presumably temporarily — surpassed those for Taylor Swift.

As I wrote about last week, Harris is more popular than Trump, but has had trouble driving a substantive message — in part because she’s running away both from her unpopular positions in 2019 and her unpopular boss, Joe Biden. So a final week that’s all about Trump — and shows off some of the most unappealing elements of his campaign — could throw Harris a lifeline.

1. Though with a different striping pattern.

2. I don’t mean this is a pejorative way. Some huge fraction of attendees had MAGA hats on, making it feel very much like a sporting event.

3. Although I did go to the dog show one year.

4. In fact, there are plenty of Trump fans everywhere. In 2020, the county that gave Trump the most votes was Los Angeles County, California — not really a surprise since it’s by far the most populous county in the US. Still, Trump got more than 900,000 votes there, more than he received in Wyoming and West Virginia combined.

5. If you want the detailed daily numbers at Google Trends, you can only get them in 30-day increments — otherwise, it defaults to weekly results. So I retrieved the data in a series of 3-week increments with a 1-week overlap to calibrate them to the same scale.