Haley Republicans Could Sink Trump

But Haley won't be the Republican nominee

Nikki Haley announces her presidential campaign in Charleston, South Carolina, February 15, 2023 (Bill Clark)

Donald Trump is very likely to be the Republican nominee for President. But Trump should probably be seen as a weak incumbent, rather than as a strong contender for leadership of the party. The fact that a significant minority of Republicans prefer he be replaced at the top of the ticket by another candidate suggests he will have a hard time beating Joe Biden in the general election.

Former President Donald Trump is in command of the Republican Party. His Republican rivals effectively conceded the primaries to him by for the most part not criticizing him. Other Republicans’ reluctance to challenge Trump is an acknowledgement of the reality that challenging him makes them less popular among Republican voters. Trump will now very likely be the Republican nominee for President again this year—he will likely be the nominee even if he is convicted of a serious crime—unless he dies or becomes seriously ill before the Republican Convention in July. Former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley is almost certainly not going to win enough delegates to defeat him; she probably won’t even win her home state of South Carolina.

But we shouldn’t assume that Trump’s popularity with Republicans makes him a strong general election candidate. If anything, the fact that his victories in Iowa and New Hampshire were not completely decisive suggest he will have a hard time winning the general election in the fall. They were not a strong performance from a relative unknown in an open nomination contest, but rather a weak performance from the de facto leader of the Republican Party. As a former president, Trump has a huge advantage over potential challengers. It’s not surprising that he can fend off what is—as

Dan Pfeiffer

argues—essentially a primary challenge. No president in modern times has lost their party’s nomination contest. The 54% of the vote that Trump won in New Hampshire is only slightly more than President Lyndon Johnson—who later dropped out of the race—and President Jimmy Carter—who lost to Ronald Reagan in a historic landslide. While lots of Democrats are dissatisfied with Joe Biden, he won 64% of the vote in New Hampshire in spite of—thanks to a dispute between the state and the party over the primary calendar—not even being on the ballot there. Biden went on to win 96% of the vote in South Carolina and 89% of the vote in Nevada.

It’s hard to find a good historical comparison for Trump. The last former president to seek his party’s nomination after failing to win reelection was Teddy Roosevelt more than 100 years ago. But incumbents who are popular within their own party—like Trump himself four years ago—don’t face serious primary challenges from credible candidates. Biden’s main challengers are three-term Congressman Dean Phillips and self-help writer Marianne Williamson. Stronger potential candidates—like Vice President Kamala Harris, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, and Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer—opted not to enter a race they would almost certainly lose. Trump, meanwhile, faced challenges from prominent Republicans like former Vice President Mike Pence, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, and former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, who saw him as potentially vulnerable.

Haley is very unlikely to win the nomination. She probably wouldn’t be the alternate even if Trump for some reason had to withdraw from the race, because her opposition to Trump taints her with most Republican voters. But the part of the electorate Haley represents—conservatives who have had enough of Trump—is a major obstacle to him returning to the presidency. Polls show that a substantial percentage of Republicans say they wouldn’t vote for Trump or would be dissatisfied if he’s the party’s nominee. Large majorities of Haley voters in particular say they wouldn’t vote for Trump if he’s the nominee. Many Haley Republicans will ultimately vote for Trump if he’s the nominee, but if Trump loses more than a small fraction of them he’ll probably lose the general election. Even a small number of defections will doom him.

Over the last 8 years, Trump has systematically had his critics expelled from the party. He made unqualified support of himself personally—rather any policy preference or set beliefs about the world—the litmus test of Republicanism. He successfully labeled people who were clearly Republicans in every other sense—including Liz Cheney, Chair of the House Republican Conference until 2021, and Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee for president just 12 years ago—“Republicans in name only” for having the audacity to challenge him. Republicans who disagree with Trump have had to swallow their opposition to him to remain in good standing with the party. It should be no surprise that those who remain in the Republican Party are Trump supporters. But purging his critics has ultimately made the Republican Party smaller; it didn’t make Trump more popular with American voters. As Republican Senator John Cornyn recently said, “You can’t win with just your own base.”

The main reason to think Trump can defeat Biden is that Trump has a small lead in head-to-head polling right now. It’s certainly possible that voters have lost confidence in Biden over the last three years, and that Trump’s voters will turn out for him in the fall when it matters most. Metaculus gives Trump even odds of winning in November. But head-to-head polling historically hasn’t been meaningful before the general election has gotten underway. My bet is that voters are expressing their dissatisfaction with Biden, but still aren’t taking the prospect of a second Trump presidency seriously. Trump has actually won only one general election campaign—in 2016 when who he is as a politician was relatively unknown—but Trump and MAGA candidates have done badly in every election since. Biden’s numbers are likely to improve as voters begin to feel better about the economy, while Trump’s are likely to get worse as voters pay closer attention to his criminal trials. Trump is going to need most of those Haley voters to win. My prediction is that he won’t get enough.

My Forecasts

• 96% chance Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee in 2024

• 73% chance the Democratic nominee will win the presidency in 2024

All my recent predictions are on Fatebook here.

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