Haley’s protest vote opens door for Biden in key swing state, Pennsylvania
The notable support for Nikki Haley in Pennsylvania’s primary sparks concerns about Donald Trump’s Republican base. Despite Haley exiting the race, her substantial backing hints at challenges for Trump. This scenario also provides an opening for Joe Biden, who aims to attract these voters for a potential advantage in the swing state. Discussions and strategies around courting Haley supporters highlight the shifting dynamics in the upcoming election.
The level of support for former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley in Pennsylvania‘s presidential primary raises questions about Republican nominee Donald Trump‘s standing within his own party.
She dropped out of the race more than a month ago, yet more than 155,000 Pennsylvania Republicans voted for her over the former president.
Yet it also presents an opportunity for Trump’s rival, President Joe Biden. He has attempted to court those voters as part of his reelection bid, but that effort could prove especially useful in Pennsylvania, a swing state that he won by just over 80,000 votes in 2020, or 1 percentage point.
The outcome in Pennsylvania’s closed Republican primary on Tuesday, in which Haley received 17% of the vote, was not a one-off. The former South Carolina governor notched 13% of the vote in Wisconsin last month after receiving 18% in Arizona, 13% in Georgia, and 14% in Florida the week following Super Tuesday.
She handily lost to Trump, suspending her bid after Super Tuesday, but demonstrated what could be an enduring problem for the former president with centrists and in the suburbs.
“It is now up to Donald Trump to earn the votes of those in our party and beyond it who did not support him, and I hope he does that,” Haley told a small crowd in Charleston during her concession speech. “This is now his time for choosing.”
The remark was a reference to Trump downplaying the importance of Haley voters during the primary, saying, “I’m not sure we need too many.” He also warned Haley donors that he would exile anyone who wrote her a contribution. “We don’t want them and will not accept them.”
The Biden campaign has seized on those and other comments, seeing a chance to make inroads with Republican-leaning independents.
“Donald Trump made it clear he doesn’t want Nikki Haley’s supporters,” Biden said in a post-Super Tuesday statement. “I want to be clear: There is a place for them in my campaign.”
Two weeks later, the campaign spent seven figures on a three-week digital ad buy in which Biden appeals directly to Haley voters. His team targeted eight states after using Republican primary results to determine its placement across Meta, YouTube, connected TV, and online video.
Biden has carried that strategy into battleground states including Pennsylvania, where he is in a virtual tie with the former president in recent polling.
“Donald Trump has a serious general election problem,” Biden campaign spokesman Ammar Moussa told reporters Wednesday.
“His cash-strapped campaign is struggling to communicate on the airwaves, has no real staff footprint in key battlegrounds, and is spending more on his personal problems than reaching voters,” Moussa said, referring to the criminal indictments against Trump. “Even if he had the money, Trump’s toxic agenda of abortion bans, tax cuts for the wealthy, and ripping away freedoms is a losing one, and shows he has no path to building the coalition necessary to win 270 electoral votes.”
Biden faces troubles of his own, notably with his base as Israel’s war with Hamas drags on. But Biden has been able to win ex-MGM Chairman and Haley supporter Harry Sloan, in addition to another half dozen onetime Haley bundlers, over to his camp, while pollsters are looking for signs of whether Biden can make a dent with the voting bloc of Haley supporters themselves.
“The Haley voters are an important group to watch going forward,” Marist Institute for Public Opinion Director Lee Miringoff told the Washington Examiner. “So far, concern from this group tends to be from Republican-leaning independents, not base Republicans. Closer to Election Day will provide a better look as to whether these voters skip the line, stay home, vote for either Biden or Trump or a third-party candidate.”
For David Paleologos, the director at Suffolk University’s Political Research Center, Haley voters are likely to support independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. or the Libertarian Party nominee, either Charles Ballay, Mike ter Maat, or Lars Mapstead.
Either way, if Haley voters do not back Trump, they have effectively aided Biden, he said.
“A third-party vote is a vote away from Trump, which is a vote for Biden,” Paleologos told the Washington Examiner.
“Libertarian voters may have cost Trump the 2020 election,” he said. “Jo Jorgensen received many more than Trump lost by in Wisconsin, Arizona, and Georgia. If those voters only had two choices, they probably would have rotated to Trump and put the Electoral College at 269-269, which could have tipped to a Trump reelection given that Republicans held majorities of congressional delegations at the time.”
To Paleologos’s point, a Yahoo News-YouGov poll published last week found Biden’s share of the hypothetical general election vote among Democrats, Republicans, and independents remaining steady between its March 8-11 and April 11-15 surveys, while Trump’s share of Republicans and independents decreased from 90% and 42% to 87% and 39%, respectively. At the same time, Republicans and independents considering casting a ballot for another candidate increased from 4% and 15% to 6% and 21% apiece.
A Republican strategist told the Washington Examiner, “Haley voters who decide to vote for Biden should think again.”
“That’s the last thing Haley would want,” he said. “If Trump doesn’t work hard to earn their vote, they should vote their conscience and write in.”
The Trump campaign, for its part, says it is not concerned, arguing that Trump, who has not spoken with Haley, delivered a “resounding” primary win in Pennsylvania.
“More importantly, President Trump continues to dominate Feeble Joe Biden in every battleground state poll including his home state,” Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told the Washington Examiner. “The Dishonest Biden campaign has spent millions in Pennsylvania gaslighting voters, but it is not enough to make everyone ignore Bidenflation and rising costs, Biden’s border bloodbath, and his war on American energy.”
“Rather than simply staying home, it’s no wonder why Democrat voters are turning out to reject their own president,” the campaign added, citing protest votes over his response to the Israel-Hamas war in states such as Michigan.
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Meanwhile, Biden has the support of at least one prominent Republican: George Conway. Former Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway‘s ex-husband, who co-founded the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, announced before his Biden fundraiser Wednesday night in Washington, D.C., that he had donated almost $1 million to the incumbent’s campaign.
“There’s nothing more important than this,” Conway told CNN Tuesday. “It’s going to come out of my kids’ inheritance, but the most important thing they can inherit is living in a constitutional democracy.”
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