They didn’t even show Florida, which is a real shocker:
It’s about time the MSM took notice of this phenomenon. There’s been a ton of talk about the Biden “uncommitted” vote because of Gaza but very little about the fact that Trump’s getting a smaller percentage of the GOP vote than Biden gets from Democrats. And a bunch of these races have happened long after the other candidates have dropped out:
A month after Nikki Haley dropped out of the Republican race, former President Trump is still dealing with a contingent of voters showing up to cast primary ballots for candidates who aren’t him.
Why it matters: President Biden has more successfully unified his voters despite never facing a strong primary opponent and an organized protest vote over the war in Gaza.
-In 10 recent primary contests, more than one-quarter of GOP primary voters cast a ballot for a non-Trump candidate.
-“Joe Biden has a real golden opportunity to capture all those disaffected people who voted for Nikki Haley,” said Arizona-based GOP strategist Barrett Marson.
Driving the news: In the key battleground state of Wisconsin on Tuesday, 20.8% of Republican primary voters cast a ballot for a candidate other than Trump.
-Haley, the former UN ambassador who suspended her campaign a month ago, drew more than 12%, or 76,000 votes, in Wisconsin, which Biden won by just over 20,000 votes against Trump in 2020.
-“Those are significant numbers,” longtime Wisconsin Republican strategist Bill McCoshen told Axios.
-“Will those voters come home in November? I think it’s possible they will, history suggests that most of them will, but I think it’s also a signal to the Trump campaign that his pick for a VP could be very critical to bringing these voters back.”
-Trump saw a larger share of protest votes in Wisconsin than Biden in the Democratic primary, where 8.3% of voters, or about 48,000, supported the “uninstructed” vote in protest of Biden’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war.
The big picture: In another key presidential swing state, Arizona, Haley won about 18% of the vote in the GOP primary last month, despite having suspended her campaign about halfway through early voting.
[…]
It’s possible that some of the non-Trump votes in recent contests were from voters who cast a ballot while Haley was still in the race — and are planning to back Trump in November.
But the sizable shares of protest votes could also be a sign of Trump’s vulnerabilities ahead of an election that’s likely to be decided by the margins in a few key swing states.
Yes it could. It’s possible that there are more disaffected Trump voters than are being measured in the opinion polls. These are real elections and while they can’t tell us exactly what’s going to happen in November, they are certainly a clue. The Trump campaign should be worried.