PBS and NPR for Southwest Florida
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Trump To Rally In Florida Monday Amid Waning Support From Seniors

Julian and Anne Timoner’s golf cart led a pro-Biden parade on Aug. 21.
Julian and Anne Timoner’s golf cart led a pro-Biden parade on Aug. 21.

President Donald Trump is looking to get his campaign back on track, a week after he was sidelined with the coronavirus, which has killed more than 210,000 Americans.

As questions linger about his health, he will hold an event at the White House on Saturday and what he calls a “BIG RALLY” in Sanford at 7 p.m. Monday at Orlando Sanford International Airport. Trump had been scheduled to attend a rally at the airport Oct. 2, but the event was canceled after he contracted COVID-19.

Trump on Friday held what his campaign billed as a “radio rally” as he dialed in to the show of conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh. Despite public and private surveys showing him trailing Democrat Joe Biden, Trump predicted a greater victory in 2020 than he had four years ago.

Aides say President Donald Trump's campaign has seen an alarming drop in support among older adults in its internal research.

The campaign’s worries are supported by some public polls suggesting that Joe Biden could perform better among older people than Hillary Clinton did four years ago.

The shift appears to be driven largely by Trump’s handling of the coronavirus, which affects these voters more acutely than others.

Nowhere is the battle for the 2020 election more evident than in The Villages, the nation's largest retirement community, located in the all-important swing state of Florida.

Meanwhile, Republicans in Florida are fighting to energize President Donald Trump's base while the president recovers from the coronavirus.

This week, nearly 300 Republicans in the Florida Panhandle packed shoulder-to-shoulder inside a Holiday Inn conference room to demonstrate their commitment to Trump.

The crowd was a far cry from the 10,000-plus drawn to the president’s past rallies in this deep-red bastion of Trumpism.

There is no question Trump will win the Florida Panhandle again this fall, but more than that, he needs to run up the score to compensate for weakness among older voters and suburbanites elsewhere.

That task has become more difficult with the president in quarantine.

Copyright 2020 WUSF Public Media - WUSF 89.7. To see more, visit .

The Associated Press is one of the largest and most trusted sources of independent newsgathering, supplying a steady stream of news to its members, international subscribers and commercial customers. AP is neither privately owned nor government-funded; instead, it's a not-for-profit news cooperative owned by its American newspaper and broadcast members.