As the South Carolina Republican primary approaches, the evidence is growing that Nikki Haley’s coalition is almost certainly not large enough to deny Donald Trump the GOP presidential nomination. But evidence is also accumulating that her coalition is more than large enough to deny Trump the White House in a general election if her voters remain as alienated from him as they now say they are.
Story highlights
Haley is exposing fault lines in the GOP coalition
Her coalition doesn’t appear to be enough to stop Trump from winning the nomination
But her supporters present an opportunity for Biden to peel off crossover voters in a possible rematch with Trump
The support for Haley in the early GOP contests has mapped, probably more precisely than ever before, the segments of the Republican electorate most deeply disaffected with Trump. In a possible rematch with Trump this fall, President Joe Biden will likely need to attract crossover support from a significant share of those ordinarily Republican-leaning voters to overcome the towering discontent evident in polls about his own performance.
So far, most polls show Biden making only very limited inroads in a general election against Trump with the kind of GOP primary voters displaying the most support for Haley – a universe centered on college-educated, ideologically centrist, and Republican-leaning independent voters. But surveys of voters participating in the Iowa and New Hampshire nominating contests show that most Haley supporters express deeply negative views about Trump. That could provide Biden an opening for greater gains in the months ahead – if he can resolve, or even temper, more of those voters’ doubts about his own record, age and strength.
“If there’s anything that should be sending warning flares up in the sky for the Trump people, this is it,”…
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