Republicans are taking mixed messages from Tuesday’s primary in the battleground state of Pennsylvania after former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley received 16.6% of the vote more than seven weeks after suspending her presidential campaign.
The Keystone State contest was open only to registered Republicans, and some observers are warning that Haley getting more than 157,000 votes — more than the margin of victory in each of the past two general elections — shows how much persuasion former President Donald Trump has left to do.
“It’s near impossible to win a swing state without earning the support of Haley Republicans,” one former staffer on the ex-UN ambassador’s campaign told The Post.
“These are Republican primary voters who are fed up with the drama and chaos of the past and are actively turning out to vote against the presumptive Republican nominee. If Trump wants to win, he should do everything he can to win over Nikki’s support and her voters.”
One Republican strategist argued that Haley primary voters who feel snubbed by the 45th president should write in whomever they wish rather than pick what they consider the better of two bad options.
“Haley voters shouldn’t vote for Joe Biden — his policy views are completely opposite of hers and what is traditional Republican orthodoxy,” this person said. “If Trump doesn’t work hard to earn their vote, they should vote their conscience and write someone in.”
The RealClearPolitics polling average shows Biden leading Trump in his birth state by 0.4 percentage points. Since January, no survey incorporated in the RCP data has shown Trump leading Biden in the state by more than six percentage points.
The Trump team, meanwhile, crowed about the 77-year-old’s “resounding” Keystone State win.
“More importantly, President Trump continues to dominate Feeble Joe Biden in every battleground state poll including his home state,” national campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt told The Post, without addressing Haley’s numbers.
“The Dishonest Biden campaign has spent millions in Pennsylvania gaslighting voters, but it is not enough to make everyone ignore Bidenflation and rising costs, Biden’s border bloodbath, and his war on American energy.”
Neither Trump’s campaign nor the Republican National Committee have indicated undue concern about disgruntled Haley voters — with an RNC rep telling reporters last month the “door is always open” for them to get behind the presumptive nominee.
“The share … that are Republicans, we have no doubt that we’re going to get them back because they’re facing a choice between, you know, continue to slide downhill from an economic standpoint, from a security standpoint, from a border security standpoint, and more of the same, so an actual fundamental change,” the staffer said at the time.
“So we’re not really worried about that. Our door’s always open. Always has been.”
Sentinel Action Fund, a super PAC backing conservative candidates across the country, also shrugged off Haley’s Pennsylvania performance, taking it as a sign that Republicans will flock to the polls in November.
“What we are looking at, and what will ultimately be the most important factor in the general election, is voter turnout. Back in the 2022 Senate race in PA, Republicans went into Election Day 400% behind due to mail-in ballots cast by Democrats, but the tide is already turning for this year’s cycle,” said SAF president Jessica Anderson.
“After the 2024 primary, we’ve already seen Republican absentee ballot requests jump 18% and vote-by-mail returns jump by 7% from 2022, which was also a contested Republican primary. On the other hand, we’ve seen both absentee ballot requests and returns go down on the Democrats’ side. Simply put, Republican numbers are going up and Democrat numbers are going down.”
Meanwhile, Biden’s team has launched an ad campaign urging Haley supporters to vote for the Democrat in November, reminding her voters that Trump called his former employee “Bird Brain” during their primary battle.
The 30-second ad, launched last month, is centered in eight battleground states where Haley had a relatively strong showing against Trump in the primaries.
Despite courting Haley voters, Biden is facing his own protest movement, with Democrats turning out to cast or write in “uncommitted” ballots in response to his handling of the war in the Middle East.
In Michigan, a swing state with the highest percentage of Arab Americans in the country, Biden was plagued by 13.3% of “uncommitted” voters in the Feb. 27 primary. In Minnesota, another state with a strong activist and Muslim population, the protest vote came in at 19%.
A similar movement, called “Uncommitted PA,” set a goal of 40,000 write-in votes, but its tally had not been confirmed as of noon Thursday.
The total number of write-in votes in the Democratic primary exceeded 60,000 as of noon Thursday, with several precincts in cities like Philadelphia yet to report their tallies.
