AT MADISON SQUARE GARDEN, THE WIDE WORLD OF TRUMP. New York — If you wanted to see living, breathing proof of former President Donald Trump‘s success in broadening the appeal of the Republican Party, you just had to look around his mega-rally in Madison Square Garden Sunday night. No, Trump did not draw hordes of fans from the deep-blue blocks of Manhattan surrounding the arena. Nearly everyone I talked to came in from Long Island, New Jersey, or the outer boroughs of the city, in particular the most outer of the outer boroughs, Staten Island. But if you were looking specifically for, say, Trump’s growing appeal to Latino voters, all you had to do was look around.

An extensive poll done last month by NBC News and Telemundo showed Vice President Kamala Harris leading Trump by 54% to 40% among Hispanic voters. That 40%, should Trump actually achieve it, would equal the best Republican performance among Latino voters ever by President George W. Bush in 2004. (Remember that Trump won about 28% of the Latino vote in 2016 and about 32% in 2020. Both figures were significantly better than Mitt Romney and John McCain in the two elections before Trump.) The NBC-Telemundo poll showed Trump doing particularly well among male Latino voters, with whom Trump and Harris were tied, 47% to 47%.