Are Haley Voters Actually Biden Voters?

Nikki Haley supporters wave signs at a campaign event in Orem, Utah, on February 28, 2024. Photo: George Frey/Getty Images

Donald Trump is on the brink of a big batch of Republican primary victories on Super Tuesday. The March 5 cluster of 15 contests will likely put him within reach of clinching the nomination later this month and could knock Nikki Haley out of the race for good. At the same time, the former president is riding pretty high in general-election polls testing a rematch with Joe Biden.

But despite Haley’s losing performance everywhere other than the District of Columbia, there’s been a drumbeat narrative that her strong minority percentage of the vote in these contests contains the seeds of defeat for Trump in November. Politico epitomized this take right after Trump routed Haley in her home state of South Carolina:

Behind every silver lining, there has been a cloud for Trump during the GOP primary, and otherwise sunny South Carolina proved no exception. With about three-quarters of the expected vote in, some 40 percent of voters rejected Trump.

That number itself isn’t a problem in a primary. But it includes some serious reasons for concern in a general election. Trump lost moderate and liberal voters to Haley by a wide margin, according to exit polls. And, according to AP VoteCast, a bit over 1 in 5 GOP primary voters said they would not vote for Trump in November if he was the party’s nominee.

Haley herself broadcast this way of looking at her minority coalition in South Carolina by way of spinning her defeat:

Today, in South Carolina, we’re getting around 40% of the vote. That’s about what we got in New Hampshire too.

I’m an accountant. I know 40% is not 50%. 

But I also know 40% is not some tiny group.

There are huge numbers of voters in our Republican primaries who are saying they want an alternative.

The assumption here is that Haley’s vote represents a combination of anti-Trump Republicans, centrist independents, and a handful of disgruntled Democrats. In other words, swing voters who will go red with Haley and probably blue if Trump is the nominee.

It’s hard to argue otherwise unless you have a better idea of who’s voting for Haley in states like New Hampshire, where any independent regardless of ideology or partisan leanings can participate in Republican presidential primaries, or in South Carolina and Michigan, where any registered voters, including hard-core Democrats, can do so. Indeed, even though Haley will be crushed on Super Tuesday, there are a number of primaries (Alabama, Arkansas, Minnesota, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, and Virginia) where both independents and Democrats can vote for her, and others (Colorado, Massachusetts, Minnesota, and North Carolina) where Democratic-leaning independents can participate. Will her voters represent potential swing-voter defectors from a Trump ticket in November?

That’s not entirely clear, but some analysis from the New York Times’ Nate Cohn based on a new national survey with Siena College suggests otherwise:

The poll found Mr. Trump leading Nikki Haley in the Republican primary, 77-20. That’s pretty good for Mr. Trump, of course, but it’s actually Ms. Haley’s best result in a month. And according to our poll, there’s a simple reason for her strength: Biden voters, who now make up 15 percent of those who say they will probably vote in the Republican primary. In fact, a near majority of Ms. Haley’s supporters (48-31) say they voted for Mr. Biden in the last election instead of Mr. Trump.

This finding suggests that many Haley voters are not flippable swing voters Trump would sacrifice, but may instead be 2020 Biden voters who weren’t really on the table for Trump at all, from the get-go. If that is the case, then we shouldn’t view the votes Haley receives in states where non-Republicans can participate as omens of doom for Trump in November.