Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump appeared at private fundraising events and a public rally in the northeastern United States on Saturday, making his first visit to New Hampshire since the pivotal primary election there in February, which he won by a wide margin.
The Boston Globe reported that Trump attended two fundraisers in Massachusetts, in resort areas on Nantucket Island and on Cape Cod. Donors were expected to contribute $2,700 or more to attend the gatherings, one of which was at the home of Bill Koch, brother of Charles and David Koch, well-known and well-heeled donors to Republican causes.
Trump traveled to southern New Hampshire later for a rally at a high school in suburban Windham, near the Massachusetts border.
Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton has nothing listed on her public schedule until Monday, when she will make campaign appearances in Florida and New York City.
On Friday, Trump belatedly endorsed some of the country's top Republicans running for re-election in November, possibly as a gesture of party unity after several surveys of American voters this week showed the billionaire businessman trailing Clinton in the presidential race.
The most recent opinion poll, a Reuters/Ipsos survey released late Friday, showed Clinton's lead over Trump had narrowed to less than 3 percentage points, a drop from 8 points that the same poll showed four days earlier.
Bigger lead for Democrat
But another survey conducted this week, the McClatchy/Marist poll, showed Clinton widening her lead over Trump to 15 points nationwide, 48 percent to 33 percent. And another poll by Fox News showed Clinton with a 10-point lead.
The nonpartisan website RealClearPolitics.com, which calculates an average of results from multiple opinion polls, reported that Clinton had a 6.8-point lead over Trump, 47.3 percent to 40.5 percent.
On Friday, Trump endorsed House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senators John McCain and Kelly Ayotte for re-election. He had delayed giving those three Republicans his public support until then — in Ryan's case, saying he was "not quite there yet" — attracting criticism from other high-ranking Republicans.
The intraparty tensions and Trump's ongoing feud with the Muslim parents of a U.S. military officer who was killed in combat in Iraq have been seen as distractions from the Republican nominee's campaign efforts, damaging his popularity among voters who have not yet made up their minds about which candidate to support.
