What would Trump supporters gain by blocking access to polling places?

Question

This news article says

Donald Trump’s supporters have been out in force on America’s highways as this year’s election race enters its home straight, blocking roads, bridges and freeways in New York, New Jersey and Colorado and stopping voters reaching polling stations in Temecula, California.

All of these states, except for Colorado, are Democrat strongholds - making it unlikely that blocking access to a polling station would make any difference to the election.

It can also be reasonably assumed that a larger proportion of Democrats have voted by mail, meaning that statistically Republican votes would be more impacted by difficulty getting to the polling station.

Is there any scenario where regardless of whether blocking traffic to polling stations were intentional or not, that it could have a large enough impact to make any difference in favour of the Republicans?

Answer 1

There are regional differences in voter preference in almost every election. So suppressing voters in selected areas where the population favors the opposing candidate can be an effective strategy for election manipulation.

But California, New Jersey and New York are all very solid blue states. There is practically nothing that could happen in these states to make Trump win them. Colorado is perhaps the only one of the states where a Trump surprise win is at least conceivable, but still unlikely (fivethirtyeight election forecast says Trump 42.8, Biden 54.5).

The main purpose of this form of political activism seems to be symbolic.

It might also be worth mentioning that if you read the reports more closely that it's not clear that blocking access to polling sites was really the primary goal of these activists and not just collateral damage from an otherwise peaceful demonstration in favor of their preferred presidential candidate.

Answer 2

First, it's important to note the the crystalizing moment for this behavior was in Texas, where a self-professed 'Trump train' of people in vehicles harassed and blocked a Biden/Harris campaign bus on its way to an event, blocking traffic and damaging cars ostensibly belonging to volunteers (though it isn't clear those people were actually volunteers for the Biden/Harris campaign). Texas may be starting to turn purple — this election will tell — but it is hardly a blue state by any means. The subsequent events were somewhat more organized and intentional protests chiming off that original spontaneous event.

The subsequent events that happened in blue states weren't intended to directly hamper the vote. They had two goals:

• To build group cohesion and energy by making a public demonstration
• To generate conflict that might be interpreted as a threat, and thus act as an implicit voter suppression tactic

These goals are far better served by staging the protests in predominantly blue states, because:

• Conservatives in blue states feel unheard, and are in most need of building group cohesion and energy
• Blue states protests are likely to tweak stronger reactions from liberals, generating more publicity and air time than similar events in red states

Any other time I would view these actions as standard and unobjectionable protests (with the inevitable collateral damage from participants on the low end of the moral development scale). Staging them days before a national election, however, starts to take on the sickly odor of an authoritarian regime: shades of the Iranian paramilitary Basij patrolling pro-democracy protests in Tehran, running down random protesters with their motorcycles to intimidate the group as a whole. It's clear enough that many of these 'Trump train' participants would like to imagine themselves as that kind of paramilitary force — groups like the Proud Boys have said as much — but it is disconcerting seeing them start to organize as such.