President Trump voted at a polling station in Palm Beach County, Fla., on Saturday afternoon, 10 days before the midterm elections.
Mr. Trump, joined by the first lady, Melania Trump, cast his ballot before a trip to Georgia for a campaign rally.
Over the years, Mr. Trump has voted early in person and by mail, though he has also at times said early voting is “stupid” and “ridiculous,” and promoted baseless claims that mail voting is rife with fraud.
“We should have one-day voting,” Mr. Trump said in July 2024.
This year, he voted by mail in a March special election and in Florida’s primary elections in August. Mr. Trump, a native New Yorker who now calls Florida home, has been registered to vote in Palm Beach County since 2019.
Three weeks ago, the president urged Republican voters to embrace various options to cast their ballots. “Vote early,” he said in a video he posted on social media. “Vote by mail. Or vote in person on Election Day.”
Mr. Trump has been crisscrossing the country ahead of the Nov. 3 general election, trying to rally support for Republican candidates, who are facing political headwinds created by his low approval rating and voter dissatisfaction with high prices.
Mr. Trump has urged his supporters to “pretend” that he is on the ballot, hoping to activate voters who might otherwise sit out the midterms.
At the polling station, Mr. Trump acknowledged the challenge facing his party.
“The sitting president always does badly in the midterms — almost,” he told reporters. (In midterms from 1934 to 2018, the incumbent president’s party bled an average of 28 seats in the House and four in the Senate, according to the American Presidency Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara.)
But Mr. Trump, whose approval rating hit a new low this week, expressed optimism, predicting Republicans would defy historical trends.
“There’s no president that’s ever campaigned like I have,” Mr. Trump said. “I’ve campaigned very, very hard.”
Still, Republicans in some of the most competitive races have shied away from mentioning Mr. Trump in their advertisements and have appeared reluctant to host him in their states.
The post Trump, Who Once Called Early Voting ‘Ridiculous,’ Casts a Midterm Ballot appeared first on New York Times.
