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By Roberta Rampton, Julia Harte and Ned Parker
CLEVELAND (Reuters) – For many Americans, Tuesday's midterm congressional elections are a referendum on Republican President Donald Trump's dissenting personality, uncompromising policies and pugnacious politics.
But on the eve of the elections, in a crowded airport hangar in Cleveland and other Trump rallies across the country, the stakes are different: a vote to protect a leader they see as besieged, whose fiery rhetoric is a price needed for an era of upsetting change.
"You think we're letting this caravan get into this country?" Trump asked the crowd on Monday, referring to a group of Central American migrants heading to Mexico for the US border.
"No!" his followers shouted.
At rallies of Red-haired supporters, mostly whites, in the country's conservative pockets, supporters of Trump hope to make his ideas the dominant force in American politics for decades to come.
They face strong headwinds. Nationally, about 52% of Americans disapprove of Trump's performance. More people say they would vote for a Democratic candidate rather than a Republican in Tuesday's congressional elections, according to Reuters / Ipsos polls.
But pro-Trump Republicans are eager to challenge expectations, just as the president did with his 2016 win.
In Grand Rapids, Michigan, 23-year-old Ben Hirschmann, an activist for Trump, sees Tuesday's election as decisive for Trump's US vision.
"Trump is not on the ballot, but he is on the ballot," he said at a conference call to get the vote at the local republic's headquarters. "Everything we voted for in 2016 is pending in 2018."
"NOW, WE LIVE GOOD & # 39;
Trump began Monday a three-state tour of the Midwest, staging rallies in Ohio, Indiana, and Missouri.
It has a clear strategy: drive Republicans' turnout by portraying a dark and apocalyptic view of life in America under Democrats, while stoking the fear of illegal immigration. He presents his rivals as an angry, liberal, and dangerous "crowd" and plays gains in the economy.
"Democrats produce crowds, Republicans create jobs," Trump told Cleveland, recalling a familiar replica of his rallies.
But as the frequency of his speeches and rallies increases, so do his distortions and lies, according to the Washington Post's "Fact Checker" database. In the seven weeks leading up to Tuesday's election, Trump processed an average of 30 false or misleading claims per day, compared to an average of five per day during the first nine months of his tenure.
Trump frequently denies that he cheats the public and blames the media for what he describes as a distortion of his words.
It's not clear if Trump's campaign strategy will work.
Republicans should keep control of the Senate. But Democrats are largely favored to win the 23 seats they need to take control of the House of Representatives. The Republican Party defends dozens of seats in mostly suburban areas where Trump's popularity has weakened and Democrats have performed well in the presidential elections.
Trump rallies focused on the battles in the Senate and the governorship in the states he won at the 2016 White House – from Florida and Missouri to West Virginia and the # 39; Ohio. A Trump advisor, who asked not to be identified, told Reuters: "These are places where data and polls tell us that the president is best used."
At a rally in Johnson City, Tennessee in early October, Jessica Lotz, 33, and her fiancé Chad Lavery, 49, said Trump's immigration policy was good for them. During the 2008 economic downturn, Lotz and Lavery reported having found that construction, landscaping and house painting were being done by illegal immigrants while struggling financially.
When the economy rebounded, their fortunes also evolved.
"Now we are living well," said Lavery, attributing their ability to find work and better wages to Trump, who inherited an economy that was already booming and gave it a new lease of life. with tax cuts.
& # 39; FRUSTRATED & # 39;
After a Trump rally in September in Springfield, Missouri, Brenda Webb, 64, a Trump activist, had dinner late at a restaurant with five friends from the suburbs of St. Louis to attend the rally.
Webb and her friends were associated with protests against Democratic President Barack Obama in St. Louis in 2009, which were part of a larger conservative movement called "Tea Party," centered on calls to the reducing government, reducing taxes and reducing regulations.
But the energy has fizzled, she says. The group became animated by discussing how Trump had reoriented his original Tea Party goals of calling for government from ordinary citizens, not just Washington's "elites".
"We feel like we are working to solve all the problems that frustrate us so much," said Webb.
At the Springfield rally, Brian Whorton, who drove a few hours by car to see the president, said he had voted for Obama in 2008 and 2012 before becoming a Republican. "I was not politically aware and I was not awake, I thought to myself:" Oh, he's cool, he's a good speaker and an African American, " said Whorton, a white man.
Trump's policy, he said, made a difference for him: he said his manager of an aluminum wire plant credited Trump's rates for increasing their profits.
"It puts people back to work," said Barbara Peacock, a retired postal worker, as she scoured the Trump 2020 re-election papers at her rally in Macon, Georgia on Sunday. "He says it like that."
In Ohio, Republican National Committee spokeswoman Mandi Merritt called pro-Trump enthusiasts a "grassroots army" that can be mobilized and deployed to increase voter turnout for Republican voters.
On a sunny October day, Kimmy Kolkovich, a 46-year-old Trump supporter, joined a friend on the sidewalk at a busy intersection near the Ohio Statehouse in Columbus to urge people to take a walk. register and vote.
"Even though I'm recording people who are going to vote for the other party, they see us here with our hat, and that's what's important, all the little interactions and conversations we have." said Kolkovich.
For any Reuters election coverage, see: https://www.reuters.com/politics/election2018
(Reportage of Roberta Rampton in Cleveland, Ohio, Maria Caspani and Steve Holland in Macon, Georgia, Julia Harte in Grand Rapids, Michigan and Columbus, Ohio, and Ned Parker in Springfield in Missouri and Johnson City, Tennessee, edited by Jason Szep, Colleen Jenkins and Peter Cooney)
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