If Trump runs Haley out of the race, what will her voters do in November?

Her supporters are generally moderate and college-educated — exactly the kind of voters who helped decide the recent presidential election. We spoke to nearly forty people to see where they’re leaning.

February 24, 2024

Many Americans are afraid a rematch between Trump and Biden, but no one feels the fear better than a Nikki Haley voter.

“She would be a great president, and the alternatives are not attractive,” said 72-year-old Patti Gramling, standing outside a crowded polling station Wednesday. luxury suburb from Charleston, SC “Biden is too old. And I think Donald Trump is terrible.”

Ms. Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, is learning the limits of trusting moderate, university educated and Trump-skeptical voters in today’s Republican Party. Former President Donald J. Trump is widely expected to defeat her, perhaps by a wide margin, in her home state’s primary on Saturday.

She has promised to persevere, but a crucial new equation is emerging in the 2024 election math: Where would her voters — and voters like her in key battlegrounds across the country — go in a general election battle between Mr. Trump and President Biden?

“The million-dollar question is: will they vote, will they delay – or will they vote for Joe Biden?” former Gov. Jim Hodges, a South Carolina Democrat, said of Ms. Haley’s centrist supporters in the state. “A moderate Republican voter in Charleston is not that different from a moderate Republican voter in the Milwaukee suburbs.”

In recent interviews with nearly forty Haley supporters in South Carolina’s Lowcountry, conducted primarily in historically more moderate enclaves of the state, many fell into what pollsters call the camp of the “double haters”: voters who don’t like either expected nominee.

“It just infuriates me that we have the choices we make,” said Roberta Gilman, a former teacher and resident of affluent Mount Pleasant, S.C., who is in her 70s.

About half of those interviewed, including Ms. Gilman, said they would side with the Republican in a Biden-Trump matchup, while expressing varying degrees of discomfort. That number would almost certainly be higher in the actual outcome of the general election, after Americans have retreated further into party political corners.

Others, like Ms. Gramling, made clear that Trump — who has driven many moderate and suburban voters from his party over the past eight years — now faces even greater challenges with those Americans.

“Everything about him bothers me — his arrogance, his lack of support for the military,” said Ms. Gramling, who was also a teacher. She supported Mr Trump in 2016 before backing Mr Biden in 2020 and would again back the Democrat over Mr Trump. “Everything he does is inappropriate.”

Here’s how some of these Haley voters are thinking about a choice they hope they won’t have to make:

The drifting-away-from-Trump voters

America has very few persuadable voters left, and that could be especially true in a rematch between Biden and Trump. Both men have been on the national stage for decades, and voters formed opinions about them long ago.

But some Haley voters who said they supported Trump in 2020 stressed they wouldn’t do so again. They cited his behavior after his defeat, including his election denial that led to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

Any erosion in support for Mr. Trump or Mr. Biden in 2020 could have consequences this year, especially with third-party candidates in the mix.

“If he was my choice, or Biden was my choice, I wouldn’t have a choice,” said Julia Trout, 55, of Mount Pleasant, adding that she would have always voted for the Republican ticket but would likely see a Biden-Trump matchup serve out. .

When asked what had changed her views of Mr. Trump since 2020, she replied: “the insurrection.”

“What would we do if another civil war happened?” she said. “If we can support something like this uprising, there’s no telling what could happen.”

Mr. Trump, she said, is not a politician — “he is a tyrant.”

Jeff Heikkinen, 41, a caddy who lives in Summerville, S.C., said he had supported Mr. Trump in previous elections but was concerned about his personal attacks on Ms. Haley, involving her husband, a National Guardsman, and her background as the daughter of Indian immigrants.

“He’s just trying so hard to separate people, making fun of her husband instead of being an adult,” he said. If his choices were Mr Biden and Mr Trump, he added: “I probably wouldn’t vote – I’m just so disappointed with both.”

Joy Hunter, 64, of Summerville, declined to say how she voted in the last election — though she said she “never voted Democrat” — but ruled out supporting Trump this year, citing, among other things, the riot at the Capitol.

“I know people say, ‘Just ignore his character and focus instead on what he did,’ but I don’t know if you can completely separate a person’s character from his policies,” Ms. Hunter said. About Ms. Haley, she added, “I’m going to beg her not to drop out.”

The Republicans with cognitive dissonance

Andrew Osborne, 58, a retired business owner from Summerville, said he hated Mr Trump “with a passion,” declaring: “I couldn’t put up with him for another four years.” In fact, I would probably consider leaving the country if that were our alternative.”

He would theoretically consider a Democrat, he said, because of his moderate positions on issues such as abortion rights and gun rights.

But given a choice between Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden, he said, he would still vote for the Republican, citing concerns about Mr. Biden’s age.

Mr. Osborne pointed to the release of a special counsel report that described Mr. Biden as a “well-meaning, older man with a poor memory” and a verbal slip-up Mr. Biden made shortly afterwards in which he referred to the president of Egypt as the “President of Mexico.”

“He’s the same age as my father-in-law, and I love him dearly, but I wouldn’t trust him to make me a cup of coffee,” Mr Osborne said. “This is the commander in chief of the last superpower.”

The interviews highlighted how polarized the nation has become and underscored the limits of Mr. Biden’s bipartisan appeal, something he had done to a small but important degree in 2020.

Joe Mayo, 72, a retired nuclear power plant operator who now lives in Mount Pleasant, called Mr. Trump “arrogant” and “stupid” and said he “did not represent my thoughts on the way business should be done.”

But if he is the Republican nominee, Mayo said, he will still support him because “the Democratic Party is worse than Donald Trump.”

He is certainly not alone: ​​A recent NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll found that 82 percent of Haley voters overall said they would support Mr. Trump if he faced Mr. Biden.

Lynn Harrison Dyer, a Mount Pleasant businesswoman in her 60s, noted proudly that she was the daughter of a World War II veteran and said she supported Mrs. Haley in part because she “honors the military.”

Mr. Trump, she noted, has denigrated veterans.

“That goes against everything I really believe in,” she said. “I honor and respect the military.”

But in a Trump-Biden contest, she said, she would support Mr. Trump, describing concerns about Mr. Biden’s age.

Mr. Biden is 81 and Mr. Trump is 77, but polls show the age issue hurts Mr. Biden more.

“I have seen him speaking time and time again – it concerns me greatly,” she said, politely adding: “I mean absolutely no disrespect to his age.”

The Haley-Biden voters

South Carolina’s open primary system allows voters to participate in either party’s contest. In interviews, some Democrats who voted early said they voted for Ms. Haley to try to slow Trump’s march to the nomination, not because they were sold on her candidacy.

But some voters who said they generally supported Democrats added that for now they would favor Ms. Haley over Mr. Biden in a hypothetical general election, even if they supported him over Mr. Trump.

Their desire for change signals both a weakness for Mr. Biden and a missed opportunity for Republicans.

“I love Nikki Haley,” said Brenda LaMont, 65, an options trader who lives in Charleston. “She understands world affairs. I think she is a strong leader. And I will definitely vote for a woman if I get the chance.”

And she added: “I’m not as Democrat as I used to be. I think it has become a bit too liberal.”

Scott Soenen, 47, a financial advisor who lives in Mount Pleasant, is a political independent who thinks Ms. Haley would offer a “new change.”

He also said he was “a little bit” concerned about the migrant crisis, saying it was “not as bad, for lack of a better term, as the Biden administration wants us to think.”

At an upscale gastropub in Beaufort, S.C., Jeannie Benjamin, 63, was dining Wednesday evening after attending a quiet sunset gathering for Ms. Haley.

Ms. Haley had impressed her, she said, and despite her Democratic leanings, she worried about Mr. Biden’s ability to handle the pressures of the presidency at his age. At the end of a second term he would be 86.

Asked about the prospect of a rematch between Biden and Trump, she lamented: “That’s the problem.”

“One person is getting old, and I think he has some problems,” she said. “And then the other person is the worst person on earth you can have in your White House.”