The Republican presidential primaries continue on Thursday, Feb. 8 in Nevada and are followed on Saturday, Feb. 24 by South Carolina. The race is down to Donald Trump, ahead by 57.7 percent in national polling, and Nikki Haley, who lost by 11.1 percent in New Hampshire, according to RealClearPolling from Jan. 19, 2024.
The polling for Nevada is not representative as of Jan. 29, 2024, due to lack of polling numbers post Iowa and New Hampshire caucuses. The last available poll from Race to the White House was from Jan. 14, the day before the Iowa caucus. In South Carolina, Trump leads Haley by 30.2 percent, according to RCP. The issue right now is that the polls have not kept up with the races. DeSantis is still on many of the polls despite him dropping out of the race, because they predate his drop from the race Jan. 21, 2024.
Trump may have won the primary in New Hampshire, but the results may forecast a lose to Biden in the general election. According to an analysis in the “Wall Street Journal,” Trump may risk losing enough Republican votes in a general election to lose the election. Twenty-one percent of Republicans in New Hampshire said they were so upset with Trump that they wouldn’t cast a ballot for him in November. Trump has also alienated Independents, arguably the group who got him elected in 2016. The same analysis reported that 68 percent of Independents would not vote for Trump. A candidate generally cannot win if they lose more than 10 percent of their base.
The argument for Haley is that she is more electable in a general election because she is comparatively moderate and can duck many of the usual host of insults hurled against Republican candidates. But the populist wing in the Republican party does not want moderation. According to Senator Tommy Tuberville, who you may know from his valiant yet un-winnable stand against the taxpayer funded DOD abortion policy, Nikki Haley is a “neocon.” “Neocon” has several interpretations, but in this case, Tuberville was using it as a stand-in for a corrupt Republican in name only (RINO). He sees her as a warmonger, saying “She has never seen a war she didn’t like.”
This is the crux of the problem for Republicans. The party is split. On the one side you have the populist, Trump-era MAGA folk, like Tuberville, Chip Roy, and Matt Gaetz. On the other is the old guard, people like Mitch McConnell, Kevin McCarthy, and Rand Paul. The voter base is split as well. In a highly biased, but insightful article by “The New York Times,” they identify six kinds of Republican voters. The Moderate Establishment (14 percent) are majority Never-Trump and are usually the remaining wealthy Republicans. The Traditional Conservatives (26 percent) are the people who liked Trump’s policies but not the personality, supporting “old-fashioned economic and social” policies. The Right Wing (26 percent) are the old people who watch Fox News and Newsmax who are the seemingly permanent base for Trump. The Blue Collar Populists (12 percent) are new to the Republican party, being focused on the abandonment of the Democratic party from their priorities and are highly supportive of Trump. The Libertarian Conservative (14 percent) are the rational Libertarians who haven’t thrown their vote away on the Libertarian Party and believe their economic and social views are best, although not perfectly, reflected in the Republican Party. The Newcomers (8 percent) are the disaffected liberals and democrats that were put off enough by the Squad and identity politics on the left that they found a new home in the Republican Party, although are not very likely to support Trump.
The problem for Haley is that Trump commands the Right Wing and the Blue Collar Populists, giving him about a 40 percent base in the party. And the remaining Traditional Conservative, Moderate Establishment and Libertarian Conservative are too far apart to coalesce into an anti-Trump base. The Libertarian Conservative would agree with Tuberville’s accusation of warmongering ‘neocon.” And now she might not be able to swoop up DeSantis’ 20 percent.
I myself am a Republican primary voter. I cast my first vote in 2016 for Donald Trump. I liked his bombastic attitude. I liked his policies. But, when the primary comes around on March 2 here in Missouri, I will be casting my ballot for my second choice, Nikki Haley. If you would like to give your opinion on the state of the Republican primary and party, please contact me at my email, [email protected].