Am I wrong to be a tad skeptical about these numbers?

First, the registration numbers. You get 45,000 registrants and you hold the event in a venue with a capacity of 7,500?

[The] rally in Rio Rancho was held at the Santa Ana Star Center at 3001 Civic Center Circle on September 16, 2019. The Santa Ana Star Center is a multi-purpose arena with a capacity of 7,500 for concerts and events like the rally Trump hosted. The venue was packed and thousands more had to stay outside in the overflow crowd to watch the rally on a large screen. Heavy has reached out to the local police department for an official crowd size estimate. The city told local news KRQE earlier in the day that they were expecting 12,000 to 15,000 total.

The capacity of the Pit is 15,411 for basketball, up to 13,480 for concerts. Tingley's capacity is 11,571. Why not book a bigger hall? Scared of empty seats despite this massive interest?

And if 94% of the 45,000 registrants were from New Mexico, that's approximately 2% of the total population of the state. Is that plausible? (New Mexico is a physically large state, but it has fewer residents than Brooklyn -- just over 2 million.)

Do we really believe that 31% of the registrants are on the voter rolls as Democrats? New Mexico is a blue state these days, but Democrats make up only 46% of registered voters. (Republicans are 30%; 24% are in minor parties or have no party affiliation.) That's a massive amount of crossover in a state that elected a Democratic governor last November by a 57%-43% margin, and where even a Republican poll shows that the Democrat who flipped the seat in the state's 2nd Congressional District is leading a likely opponent by 3. (The Democrat, Xochitl Torres Small, won that seat in 2018 by only 2.)

I suppose it's barely possible that all this is true -- that 48% of the registrants for this event were female and 40% were Hispanic. (The latter is barely plausible -- 47% of the state is Hispanic -- but again, that's a lot of crossover, given that nationwide polls show roughly two-thirds opposition to Trump among Hispanics.)

If Parscale is massaging the facts, who's the intended audience? The president, who probably can't absorb numbers at all (but does like to exaggerate them)? Insiders like Jared Kushner, who might fall for a whole mess of numbers, even if they don't pass the smell test? Credulous reporters like Politico's Gabby Orr, a former Murdoch journalist who's done a lot of Parscale puff pieces? The rest of the media, which might fall for this "Hey, Trump could win New Mexico" nonsense?

Trump & Co. probably like Parscale's insistence that the map can be expanded, and are no doubt willing to pay him handsomely to fulfill that promise. But in this case, he won't.

Published with permission of No More Mr. Nice Blog