Donald Trump might be moderating his rhetoric, but he hasn’t adjusted a campaign strategy that has him spending valuable time in states that will not prove decisive on Election Day.

With fewer than 80 days to go and lagging in the polls, the Republican nominee will host a rally Tuesday in Austin, Texas, and another on Wednesday in Jackson, Mississippi. Both cities sit inside strongly Republican states that are safe and uncompetitive.


These visits follow a recent trip by Trump into heavily Democratic Connecticut, a choice that enraged and confused Republicans.

“I have never known a general election campaign in my adult life, a Republican campaign, to spend time in Mississippi outside of raising money,” said Austin Barbour, a Mississippi-based Republican operative. “Donald Trump’s going to win Mississippi by at least double digits.”

But Trump is behind, several polls show, in North Carolina, a state that has gone Republican in eight of the past nine presidential elections. Georgia, which hasn’t voted Democratic since 1992, is competitive, with the latest poll showing a tied race. And more traditional battleground states have moved away from Trump: Ohio, which polls showed was a tied race last month, is now tilting in Hillary Clinton’s direction. Meanwhile, he is up in Mississippi by double digits, one recent survey shows.

“Going and doing a big event, that takes a lot of valuable time, that’s another stop you could make in Pensacola, Florida,” Barbour said. “Georgia’s close this year, North Carolina, there’s lots of places … It’s a confusing strategy. You only have a certain number of days.”

Polling, which is sparse in Texas, shows a closer race. Romney won the state by 16 percentage points; one recent survey from Public Policy Polling has Trump up by only 6 points. But virtually no one expects him to lose Texas— or to win in Travis County, home to Austin, a place so reliably blue that former Texas Gov. Rick Perry often refers to it as the “blueberry” in the “tomato soup” that is deep-red Texas.

“If you’re campaigning in Texas in the August before an election and are worried about losing Texas, you’re toast anyway,” said Brendan Steinhauser, an Austin-based conservative operative who expects Trump to win the state. “If you’re worried about the difference of winning by 3 points or 8 points, it doesn’t really matter. Don’t go to Texas; go to Iowa, where it’s tight, go to Florida, you have to win Florida. There are so many more electoral votes there. It just makes no sense.”

Rob Jesmer, a former executive director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, who has worked extensively in Texas, also questioned the decision to devote two evenings to campaigning in Texas and Mississippi.

“At this point, it doesn’t particularly surprise me, in the sense that he likes to be with people he feels most comfortable with, but it’s not a good use of his time,” said Jesmer, a Republican operative. “That’s the bottom line. He should be in swing states. Now there’s more of them, because the map is going the wrong way.”

This is not the first time Trump has campaigned in Texas in the general election: In June, for example, he held two rallies in the Dallas and Houston areas.

“In and of itself, to have an event or two for nontraditional states, sometimes you do it for donor purposes, it’s fine,” Jesmer said. “I wouldn’t look at the Texas event in isolation, I would look at the aggregate of the schedule. He’s in these random spots. I don’t understand it.”

Certainly, Clinton, too, spends time in noncompetitive states: This month, she is on a fundraising jaunt that's taking her to Massachusetts, California and New York — liberal states that won’t be in play in November—but her emphasis is on raising cash, not on spending resources on splashy public events there.

Stuart Stevens, Romney’s former chief strategist and a Mississippi native, said he understood the decision to hold events around fundraisers, but questioned why, if that’s the strategy, Trump wasn’t focusing on fundraisers in competitive states (though Trump has done some, and has an opportunity to rake in significant cash from wealthy Republican donors in Texas, which has many).

“He ought to be able to raise a lot of money in Ohio,” Stevens said. “But he’s alienated a lot of Republicans in Ohio.”

Steve Munisteri, former chair of the Republican Party of Texas who is now advising the Republican National Committee, defended Trump’s visit, saying it would help him solidify his support among Texas Republicans, and could also help down-ballot in the state, including at the state Legislature level—even though the country’s most competitive federal races are happening elsewhere.

“It gives him a chance to stretch out that lead some,” he said. “The polls have been pretty consistent, it’s a single digit race in Texas right now. … it’s not just making sure to shore up Texas, but to try to win by a healthy enough margin to help the down-ballots.”

And it’s not that he’s ignoring swing states. This week, Trump was slated to kick off the week with a Monday night rally in Akron, Ohio, and will also hit Florida on Wednesday.

Ray Sullivan, a Texas-based GOP strategist who served as a longtime adviser to Perry, said that Trump would get coverage regardless of where he appeared, and if Trump was planning on being in-state anyway, he might as well seize the spotlight.

“Any opportunity that he has to further a campaign message, particularly on the heels of the last few weeks, is a good opportunity to communicate with voters, not just in Texas but across the country,” he said. “In this national media environment, it almost doesn’t matter whether a candidate is in a swing state or a reliably Republican state, the media is going to cover it similarly.

“Now obviously,” he continued, “there are other things you can do in a competitive state to organize and energize that may or may not need to be done here in Texas, but he certainly has the megaphone wherever he is.”

But why not bring that megaphone to a swing state? Steinhauser puzzled.

“Unless you’re starving for cash and can’t raise it in those swing states, and you have to do it in Texas — then go campaign elsewhere,” he said.

Gabriel Debenedetti contributed to this report.