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Trump needs Haley voters to win back the White House

11 30
07.03.2024

Follow this authorMarc A. Thiessen's opinions

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Pennsylvanians demonstrated in 2022 that Americans will vote for a Democrat who had a stroke during the campaign if they don’t like the Republican alternative. And though Biden is the most unpopular president in the history of polling, Trump is almost as unpopular. In November, millions of Americans will be choosing between two candidates they dislike. Trump needs them to dislike him less. Yes, Biden is deeply vulnerable, but Trump has to exploit his vulnerabilities and make a concerted effort to win over Haley voters and skeptical swing voters who could very well decide the election.

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The issue facing Trump is not “Never Trump” voters who didn’t support him in the past and won’t vote for him now under any circumstances. It is “Not Trump Again” voters, Americans who are open to his policies — and might have voted for him before — but don’t like how he behaved, particularly after the 2020 election, and supported Haley in the primaries. The former group is unpersuadable; the latter might not be.

But Trump has to go out and persuade them. He needs to recognize that right now, the party is not united. It is deeply divided between the dominant MAGA wing, which encompasses about two-thirds of Republican voters, and the not-MAGA wing, which makes up about a third. Trump can’t take back the presidency without bringing the not-MAGA Republicans into his fold. But according to the Fox News Voter Analysis, 53 percent of not-MAGA Republicans in Iowa, 57 percent in South Carolina and 65 percent in New Hampshire say they won’t cast their ballot for Trump in November.

If even a fraction follows through on that promise, it could cost him the White House. Haley has won 2,873,491 votes in the GOP primaries this year. Trump lost in 2020 by just 42,918 votes in three battleground states: Georgia (11,779), Wisconsin (20,682) and Arizona (10,457). An equally small number of votes could be the difference between defeat and victory in 2024.

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One challenge in bringing them in: Many Trump-skeptical Republicans voted for him in 2016 because the Supreme Court was on the ballot. Well, thanks to his success in securing the 6-3 conservative majority, the Supreme Court is no longer the driving issue it was for these Republicans.

This much is certain: The........

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