[ad_1]
Haley did not mention exit polls conducted in California, North Carolina and Virginia on Tuesday, which showed that at least 3 in 10 Republican primary voters supported the party no matter who the candidate was. He said he would not vote for any candidate. She didn’t need it. The data was quickly seized upon by Trump’s critics, who issued similar warnings. In other words, many of the people Trump needs to win are not convinced by his candidacy.
This warning goes too far, if not completely ignored. And exit polls show why.
In each of the three states where Edison Research conducted exit polls on Tuesday, the majority of Republican primary voters were made up of people who said they were not Republicans. In California, it was 40% of voters. In Virginia, it’s just under a third. Non-Republican voters contributed most of Haley’s votes in North Carolina and Virginia (about 6 out of 10 votes in each). California contributed about 40% of Haley’s total donations.
This pattern is not new. For example, Haley’s support in New Hampshire came overwhelmingly from non-Republicans, who voted against Trump in a race seen as crucial to blocking his path to the nomination. They were voters who showed up to cast their votes.
What’s new is the question of whether voters will support the eventual Republican nominee. In each of the three states, the percentage who said “no” was about the same as the percentage of non-Republican voters. In North Carolina, for example, 34% of voters said they were not Republican, and 34% said they would not necessarily support the final candidate.
It’s too neat. Many non-Republicans came to vote and not all vowed to oppose Trump. But in each state, non-Republican voters were more likely to say they had no intention of voting for the final candidate.
At least one-fifth of voters in each of the three states are non-Republicans and said they would not necessarily support the final candidate.
You may be right to wonder what difference it makes. What if one-fifth of primary voters don’t support Trump? Or even more given the hostility of the Republican Party? That’s bad news!
not much. In primaries, each party is good at figuring out who they want as their candidate. They are not good at saying much about generals.
Consider this question. In the recent Republican primaries, who was more willing to vote: those who supported the person who was set to win the nomination, or those who wanted to make his victory as painful as possible? Trump Even Republicans who did not support Trump had an incentive to vote that Republicans who supported Trump did not have.
A New York Times/Siena College poll released over the weekend found that only 6% of Republicans said they planned to support President Biden in November, and Haley won fewer votes in each of those states. It was much lower than the percentage of Republicans who said they supported it. They do not necessarily endorse candidates. (Seven percent of Democrats told the Times they support Trump.)
The number here is relatively small. In Virginia, about three votes for every vote cast in the 2020 primary went to Trump (as of this writing). In 2020, Trump’s vote was about 14 times that of non-Republicans who are not committed to a candidate. In any case, Trump did not win Virginia in 2020.
These small numbers mean that if the opposition movement becomes more active, it could have a larger impact. One reason primary polls continue to overestimate the difference between Trump and Haley in the primary appears to be that more non-Republicans are voting than pollsters expected. . (For example, this poll before New Hampshire was based on 55 percent of votes from Republicans; exit polls there showed only half of voters identified themselves as members of the party. ) Again, this is because Trump’s opponents had an incentive to do so. It turns out that it sends exactly the message Haley wants to capitalize on right now.
Certainly, questions remain as to what kind of motivation voters will show in the general election. But no one can plausibly argue that a third of Republicans won’t vote for Trump in November. It is difficult to even argue that the opposition of some hundreds of thousands of non-Republicans to Mr. Trump’s nomination is significant. Millions of residents in these states voted against him four years ago!
All we can say is that the nomination contest is over and Trump won easily. Let’s see what happens next.
Scott Clement contributed to this report.
[ad_2]
Source link
