That Haley faction isn’t dissipating
Although former President Donald Trump has attained more than enough delegates to secure the Republican Party’s nomination for the 2024 presidential contest, his primary election numbers are likely worrying his campaign team.
On Tuesday night, Trump easily won all five Republican contests. But he isn’t winning near-universal support from GOP voters, as a significant number of those taking part in the primaries are opting for alternate candidates.
In Ohio, for example, more than one in five voters (20.8 percent) chose to vote for an option other than Trump. In Arizona, 22.1 percent of voters opted for other choices. Kansas saw nearly a quarter of all voters taking part in the Republican primary voting against Trump, with 24.5 percent choosing someone else. In Illinois, 19.3 percent voted against him.
Even in Florida, a state with a closed primary — where voters who are not registered as Republicans are barred from taking part — Trump still struggled slightly, with 18.8 percent of GOP voters selecting options other than the presumed nominee.
Exit polling data out of Ohio’s primary shows that dissatisfaction with Trump as the Republican nominee could seriously impact his chances in the fall. According to an ABC News exit poll, 18 percent of voters in the primary said they wouldn’t be voting for Trump in November, with 10 percent saying they’d back Biden and 8 percent saying they simply wouldn’t vote.
Looking at the 2020 presidential election results from Ohio and extrapolating the exit poll data from this week’s primary, if 10 percent of voters who selected Trump that year chose to back Biden instead this year, it would mean Biden would win by around 155,000 votes — and that’s not even counting the 8 percent who say they won’t back Trump if he’s still the nominee come November.
National polling data is indicating that Trump is currently beating Biden — just slightly and within most polls’ margins of error — according to an average of polling data, with the GOP nominee ahead by around 2 points. However, there’s another problem facing Trump: In several contests so far, he has underperformed in primaries compared to what polls predicted. In the New Hampshire primary, for example, Trump was expected to defeat his Republican opponents by 19.3 points; in the end, that spread dropped by 8.1 points.
Even if Trump underperforms by just a fraction of that rate, particularly in swing states, it could spell doom for his chances at the White House come November.
It’s notable that even as he’s secured the nomination this many people are still voting for other candidates. We’ve been told that in the open primaries it’s all Democrats meddling to sabotage Biden but yesterday, in his adopted home state of Florida, the same pattern emerged even though the primary was closed. This is a phenomenon even if the press is downplaying it as not very important.
Oh and by the way, there have been several post State of the Union polls that show Biden’s number ticking up against Trump.
Until the big media polls show this, I doubt the narrative that Trump is a juggernaut will change. And the polls either way are garbage right now anyway — this race is close and a couple of points plus or minus doesn’t mean much. Still, it’s always good to show movement in the right direction.