Rhode Island Republicans confident heading into Election Night

November 8, 2016 7:00 pm

By Bianca Buono

bbuono@abc6.com

@BBuonoABC6

Rhode Island’s top Republicans will gather at The Shriners in Cranston on Election Night at their GOP headquarters as they watch the votes pour in across the nation. Among those expected are Rhode Island’s GOP Chairman Brandon Bell, honorary Donald Trump representative Joe Trillo, and Cranston Mayor Allan Fung.

Republican leaders are backing Trump until the very end. Bell spent the entire day at polling places across the state as his last-ditch effort to convince voters to swing to the right. He says Republican voter turnout appears to be high.

"I think the ambivalence towards Hillary Clinton contributes to that. I think there’s a high priority out there to go against the status quo and I think there’s a lot of people out there voting for change," said Bell.

However, a Republican presidential candidate winning the state of Rhode Island is unprecedented. Since 1928, the GOP presidential candidate has only won the Ocean State four times. Most recently, Ronald Reagan won in 1984. In that election, he won every state besides Minnesota. Bell says this race has been far from normal so this could be the year that Rhode Island goes red.

"Since 1984 today may be the first chance since then that we see and the evidence of that is Donald Trump getting such a overwhelming number of votes in the Republican primary. He got more votes than Bush and McCain combined," Bell said.

ABC6 will provide live updates from the GOP headquarters throughout the night on air and online.