The final tally of voters in the 2024 Republican Presidential nomination primary show ex-President Donald Trump winning with 54.4% of the vote….
Nikki Haley with 43.3% of the vote…..
This 11% margin is NOWHERE near some polls going in that suggested a 20-30% blowout win for Trump…..
It appears that Haley was helped by ‘swing’ (Independeant) voters…..
Trump got most of the Republican vote…
But it also points to a significant number of Republican voters that did NOT vote for Trump either…
Donald Trump knew this and spent time in the final days imploring his supporter’s to come out and vote for him…
He also lit into Nikki Haley before the vote and has continued to press for Haley to quit the contest….
(It seems to be a personal problem for Trump dealing witha REPUBLICAN WOMAN causing him some problems)
All this IS in public and plays to the Biden handlers view that Donald Trump IS a weaken candidate that is working hard to screw himself in comments and gaffs even more, in addition to his HUGE legal baggage ….
Even worst for Trump is that the media is gonna change the way it covers the 2024 race…..
It will NOW be more critical of the idea that Donald Trump doesn’t have PROBLEMS….
Donald Trump has a problem no matter what happens in New Hampshire on Tuesday night: There’s a whole swath of the Republican electorate and a good chunk of independents who appear firmly committed to not voting for him in November if he becomes the nominee.
It’s an issue that became starkly apparent in polling ahead of the Iowa caucuses, when an NBC News/Des Moines Register/Mediacom poll of voters in that state found that fully 43 percent of Nikki Haley supporters said they would back President Joe Biden over Trump. And it’s a dynamic that has been on vivid display as the campaign shifted this week to New Hampshire.
“I can’t vote for Trump. He’s a crook. He’s too corrupt,” said Scott Simeone, 64, an independent voter from Amherst, who backed Trump in 2016 and 2020. “I voted for him, and I didn’t realize he’s as corrupt as he is.”
Primary elections can create intra-party divisions that, in the moment, seem impossible to heal. In 2008, a bloc of Hillary Clinton supporters started the PUMA (Party Unity My Ass) movement as a threat to never back Barack Obama after that bruising primary. Bernie Sanders’ supporters vowed to never support Clinton eight years later. In 2016, Trump himself faced pushback to his nomination all the way up to the convention floor.
But 2024 is different. Trump is not making his pitch to voters as a first time candidate. He is a known quantity who is being judged by the electorate not for the conduct of his current campaign so much as his time in office. And that, political veterans warn, makes it much harder for him to win back the people he’s alienated, including those once willing to vote Republican.
The data supports the idea that there are problems ahead for the former president. Even before the Iowa survey, a New York Times/Siena College pollfound that — including independents who say they lean toward one party over the other — Biden had slightly more support among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents (91 percent) than Trump did among Republicans and GOP-leaning independents (86 percent)…..
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More on Trump’s Swing state voter’s issue…
Trump won the state by a decent margin. However, among the swing voters who will decide the general election, Trump showed potentially debilitating weakness. According to the exit polls, Trump lost Independent/undeclared voters by 30 points.
What makes this number especially troubling for Trump is that the universe of Independents who voted last night is a Republican-leaning slice of New Hampshire Independents.
Trump also lost moderate voters by a stunning 53 point and voters with a college degree by 15 points. Additionally, 40% of New Hampshire Republican Primary voters said they would be dissatisfied with a Trump nomination.
Like in Iowa, the exit polls asked voters if they viewed Trump as fit for the presidency if he is convicted of a crime. In Republican Iowa, a third of voters said Trump was unfit, a number that should concern every Republican. In New Hampshire, 44% said Trump would be unfit for the presidency if convicted. In swing states, Trump can’t lose 4% of his voters, let alone 44%.
It’s always worth reiterating that Trump lost in 2020. To win in 2024, he must improve with the moderate, college-educated suburban swing voters. Last night’s results show he may be doing even worse with swing voters than last time….
Note…
We’ll see if South Carolina polling shows Haley closing on Trump as she has done in New Hampshire ….
Haley HAS received increased campaign funding recently…
South Carolina vote is a month away…..