Is it possible that Nikki Haley could play the spoiler in the general election and do Haley voters take enough votes from Donald Trump in the general election to swing the election to Joe Biden?”
Haley will not be on the ballot in the general election in November, so there won’t be any “Haley” voters in November; there will only be Trump and Biden voters with a few protest votes for the non-partisan, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Look at the math and three states – Florida, Pennsylvania, and Indiana.
During Trump’s successful 2016 primary race he received 54 percent in Indiana (591K votes), 56 percent (902k votes) in Pennsylvania, and just 45 percent in Florida (1.08M votes). He went on to win all three states in the general election in November of that year.
The media tries to make a mountain out of a molehill concerning Haley’s results because they look at percentages and not raw numbers.
In 2024, Haley received 21.7 percent in Indiana (128k votes), 16 percent in Pennsylvania (157k votes), and 13.9 percent in Florida (155k votes).
To put these vote totals in perspective it would have placed her in third place in Indiana in 2016 more than 250k votes behind Ted Cruz, she would have landed in 4th place in Pennsylvania in 2016 behind Cruz, and John Kasich; and 5th place in Florida behind Rubio, Cruz, and Kasich.
Elections are about who is running against whom. In 2024, in the general election, the race is between Biden and Trump. Republicans who are currently supporting Haley or casting a protest vote against Trump are likely to turn out in November, and they are likely to support the GOP nominee Donald Trump.
The conventional wisdom is, no Republican in their right mind would vote for four more years of economic disaster, domestic terrorism without consequences, and foreign wars that the U.S. is likely to become more entangled should Biden win.
