Before former President Donald Trump was set to take the stage on Monday at a North Carolina rally, MSNBC cameras panned Dorton Arena, which seats 7,600, and showed empty seats and seemingly bored rallygoers.
Five minutes after the rally was set to start, reporter Vaughn Hillyard said the arena in the battleground state was about 70% full.
“For nine years we have talked about the enthusiasm and the masses that have come out for Trump rallies time and again, even at his politically lowest points, including in 2022,” Hillyard said. “But interestingly, and I can’t tell you exactly why, this final week, we have seen far smaller crowds.”
If the pollsters (and even astrologers) are correct, it’s because Trump is on a downslide as the exceedingly close race comes to a close.
And at Trump’s Monday rally in Reading, Pennsylvania, it was no different. David Corn, the Washington bureau chief for Mother Jones magazine, shared a photo on social media and called the arena, which has a capacity of 8,800, “mostly empty.”
The smaller crowd is probably a shot to the ego for Trump, who regularly brags about how big his rallies are. On Saturday night, he told a rally crowd in Greensboro, North Carolina, that he’s had “the biggest rallies in history of any country.”
“Every rally is full. You don’t have any seats that are empty,” Trump said.
As soon as Trump said that, a camera operator for NTD Television Network panned out to show quite a few empty seats at First Horizon Coliseum, which holds 22,000. That night, NewsNation campaign reporter Libbey Dean posted a video on social media of the arena an hour into Trump’s rally. The entire back of the arena was empty.
And even though Trump packed New York City’s Madison Square Garden, which seats 19,500, on October 27, CNN producer DJ Judd pointed out on social media that people began to leave while Trump was still talking — possibly because he took the stage two hours later than expected.
Trump’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
Trump’s dwindling rally sizes are in stark contrast to Vice President Kamala Harris’ rallies, which have seen record numbers leading up to Election Day. On Oct. 25 in Houston, with special guest Beyoncé, roughly 30,000 people showed up to support the vice president at her Texas campaign rally.
As of August, the Crowd Counting Consortium, a collaborative research initiative by Harvard and the University of Connecticut, 28 of Trump’s rallies have seen an average of 5,600 people. In 2021, eight of Trump’s rallies saw an average of 15,000 people. The average of six of Harris’ rallies was 13,400.
Democrats, including Harris and former President Barack Obama, have used several opportunities to point out how small and sometimes bizarre Trump’s rallies have been. At their Sept. 10 presidential debate, Harris looked into the camera and invited Americans to watch a Trump rally.
“Because it’s a really interesting thing to watch,” she said, adding that people leave his rallies early “out of exhaustion and boredom.”
At the Democratic National Convention on Aug. 20, Obama made a joke referencing Trump’s small rallies and other attributes.
If the smaller crowd sizes weren’t enough, Trump is also ranting maybe more than usual. During his Saturday rally in Gastonia, North Carolina, the 78-year-old spent nearly two minutes speaking about the movie character Hannibal Lecter from “Silence of the Lambs.”
“When I say insane asylums and then I say Dr. Hannibal Lecter, does anybody know? They go crazy,” Trump said, pointing to the crowd. “They say, ‘Oh, he brings up these names out of ...’ Well, that’s genius. Right? Dr. Hannibal Lecter. There’s nobody worse than him.”
He continued on the topic of the fictional cannibal for about 90 more seconds. Later, he said there were 20,000 people at that rally. As the camera panned out, it showed a different picture.