How Trump’s landslide primary triumph masked silent weaknesses
Donald J. Trump’s dispiriting Republican support helped him defeat a field of presidential primary rivals in less than two months.
But he still has not won over a small but crucial group of voters: the men and women who cost him a second term in 2020.
His sweeping primaries, including more than a dozen Tuesday that pushed Nikki Haley out of the race, have masked his longstanding problems with voters who live in the suburbs, with those who consider themselves moderate or independent, and with Republicans who supported Joseph R. Biden Jr. in 2020.
On Tuesday, Trump lost his suburban ground in Virginia, despite carrying the state by as much as 28 percentage points. In North Carolina, his 51-point victory was tempered by much smaller margins in the highly educated and affluent suburbs around Charlotte and Raleigh.
While many Republican strategists expect most Haley voters will ultimately support the party’s nominee, Trump’s inability to win over these voters within four years after they helped keep him from a second term in the White House raises pressing questions about what he would like to do. can do over the next eight months to win them over.
He did not seem particularly concerned about this challenge and recently threatened to excommunicate his rival’s donors from his political movement. On Wednesday, he posted on social media that Ms. Haley “was JACKED off in record fashion last night,” while inviting “all Haley supporters to join the greatest movement in our nation’s history.”
Trump’s inability to broaden his support is among the biggest threats to his party’s efforts to regain the presidency. Ms. Haley, in particular, appeared to be a stronger candidate for November: Polls, including a recent New York Times/Siena College survey, suggested it would have been easier for her to dethrone Mr. Biden.
But Republican voters are not opposed to Trump’s electoral risks. They run towards them.
During the Republican primaries and during this week’s Super Tuesday contests, Trump amassed large margins of victory. Voters rallied behind him even as he racked up 91 felony charges in four criminal cases and looked past their party’s disappointing elections under his leadership in 2018, 2020 and 2022.
His victory last month in Iowa, the first nominating contest, was declared before many caucusgoers had even weighed in, a fitting metaphor for the air of inevitability he proudly carried into the race. The Republican primaries in New Hampshire and South Carolina saw record turnout, thanks largely to Trump voters, and he won every Super Tuesday state except Vermont, where Ms. Haley won thanks to the small state’s large percentage of college-educated voters.
“That’s the big lesson of the primary states so far: There are a significant number of Republican voters who wanted a choice in this primary process, and they are people the former president must win over by the time November rolls around.” said Rob. Godfrey, who served as a top aide to Ms. Haley when she was governor of South Carolina and as a senior adviser to Gov. Henry McMaster’s 2022 re-election campaign. “He can do it if he runs a disciplined campaign on policy and policy. no personality, and one that focuses on his opponent’s perceived failures.
Trump’s campaign expects to focus heavily on finding supporters, but will look for ways to reach disaffected Republicans. The former president has sought to recalibrate his position on abortion rights, with Republicans still feeling the repercussions of the overturn of Roe v. Wade by a conservative majority on the Supreme Court that he helped usher in.
Two unpopular nominees await
Mr. Biden, for his part, is struggling to keep his winning 2020 coalition together. He is significantly less popular than he was four years ago, and polls show Democrats are skeptical of his second campaign.
Only 83 percent of voters who supported Mr. Biden in 2020 said they would do so again this year, a stark contrast to the 97 percent of Trump voters who plan to stick with the former president, according to the Times /Siena survey released last week.
Biden’s age, his support for Israel in its war in Gaza and ongoing economic turmoil have eroded his support among young Democrats, black voters and progressives.
“We can learn something from this primary — first, Trump has reinvigorated his base,” said Adam Geller, a Republican pollster who has worked for Trump campaigns and super PACs for years. “But beyond that, it remains to be seen, because all public polling shows that moderate voters are not ready to give Trump or Biden a bouquet of roses in the general election.”
But while many of Mr. Biden’s challenges revolve around policy, Mr. Trump faces more persistent doubts about his personality and temperament that have dogged him for years.
Cory Barnett, 48, a doctor in Nashville, Tennessee, who generally supports Republicans, said he would rather see a second term for Mr. Biden than for Mr. Trump. He voted for Ms. Haley on Tuesday, even though he knew the former president was clearly headed for the nomination.
“I actually feel like I’m throwing my vote away today,” he said. “It’s just a personal statement, I guess.”
Backing away from Trump in the suburbs
Trump has repelled suburban moderates since taking over the Republican Party in 2016. He still hasn’t pulled them back.
In the suburbs, Mr. Trump split the vote with Ms. Haley in Iowa and New Hampshire, even though he won both states with ease. He captured the South Carolina suburbs, but by a smaller margin than his overall victory in the state.
These trends continued Tuesday in Virginia, where Ms. Haley won suburban areas by 1.8 percentage points despite losing the state by 28 points.
In North Carolina, where Trump won easily, 74 percent to 23 percent, he finished just seven points ahead in Mecklenburg County, home to Charlotte and its suburbs. Ms. Haley has also pushed heavily into his lead in Durham, Orange and Wake counties, highly educated, affluent suburban areas where Democrats see an opportunity to compete in the state.
“Trump cannot expand his reach beyond the MAGA base,” two of Mr. Biden’s top campaign aides, Jennifer O’Malley Dillon and Julie Chávez Rodríguez, wrote in a memo on Wednesday. “In exit poll after exit poll, he has consolidated support only among the most conservative voters.”
In Minnesota, where Mr. Trump won by 40 points, Ms. Haley finished within 10 points of him in Hennepin and Ramsey counties, including Minneapolis, St. Paul and the city’s first ring of suburbs.
Trump’s 2020 loss was driven in part by independent voters, who angered him after helping him win his 2016 campaign. The latest Times/Siena poll found independent voters split, 42 percent to 42 percent, in a rematch between Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump, but primary results indicate an ongoing battle between the former president and this voters.
In New Hampshire, Ms. Haley won independents 58 percent to 39 percent in January, according to exit polls. On Tuesday, she narrowly won the independent party in Virginia 49 percent to 48 percent.
Lillard Teasley, 60, a small business owner in Nashville who calls himself a conservative, said Tuesday that he did not support Mr. Trump but suggested that could change in November.
“I’m everyone but Biden,” he said.
Disagreement over abortion and the 2020 election
A small but significant share of Republicans continue to express concerns about Trump’s criminal cases, which remain pending after several financially damaging setbacks for him in civil lawsuits.
This was evident from CNN exit polls on Tuesday one in five Republican primaries in California and almost one in three in North Carolina said Trump would not be fit to run for president if convicted of a crime. An overwhelming majority of these voters supported Ms. Haley on Tuesday.
“There are a lot of Republicans and independents who are voting against Trump even though they know he’s going to win,” said Sarah Longwell, an anti-Trump Republican pollster. “That tells me there is a real weakness in the party for Trump.”
The results of Super Tuesday exposed other weaknesses for Trump. He lost to Ms. Haley among Republican primary voters in Virginia who oppose a nationwide abortion ban, an issue that has driven independents and even some moderate Republicans to Democrats, exit polls show.
The same polls showed she also won Republican primaries in California, North Carolina and Virginia, which said Biden won the 2020 election fair and square and those who said undocumented immigrants should be given the chance to apply for legal status to ask. A majority of the party disagreed that Biden’s victory was legitimate and favored deportation as the immigration solution. Mr. Trump carried both groups by overwhelming margins.
Republican strategists expect most of the party’s primary voters will back Mr. Trump in the general election, pointing to exit polls that showed four in 10 of Ms. Haley’s voters in New Hampshire and South Carolina had backed Mr. Biden in 2020.
However, that data point could also highlight Trump’s weaknesses.
In 2020, about 9 percent of Republicans said they would have voted for someone other than Trump for president. That was about double the share of Democrats who said they had supported someone other than Biden in that election.
On Tuesday, about one in three Republican primary voters in California, North Carolina and Virginia told pollsters they would not commit to supporting the party’s candidate in November.
About three-quarters of those voters supported Ms. Haley.
Jamie McGee reporting contributed.