Campaign

GOP primaries flash warning signs for Trump

by Caroline Vakil - 03/21/24 5:00 AM ET

More evidence that former President Trump could be a weakened general election candidate surfaced Tuesday in the results of Republican primaries he won — generally unopposed.

In primary elections in Ohio and other states, a sizable number of GOP voters still cast ballots for former rivals to the ex-president.

That’s potentially a big problem for Trump, because it suggests not all GOP primary voters are warming to him.

“I think it absolutely raises questions about his strength as a general election candidate,” said Kirk Adams, who served as chief of staff to former Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (R).

“He certainly has the wind at his back on a couple I think very important issues: One is border security, and the other is inflation,” he continued. “But those voters that voted for Nikki Haley in those state primaries were obviously not moved by that.”

A handful of states cast ballots Tuesday in the presidential primaries, including Ohio, Florida and Arizona. Trump won Ohio and Florida by roughly fourth-fifths of the vote, but former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley notched around 14 percent in each.

Meanwhile in Arizona, Trump received 78 percent of the vote, while Haley received close to 19 percent. The South Carolina Republican notably received even more support — about 21 percent of the vote — in the key counties of Maricopa and Pima.

FILE – Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally, March 9, 2024, in Rome Ga. An attorney for Donald Trump says he’s optimistic an appellate review will lead to the Georgia 2020 election interference case against him being dismissed and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis being disqualified. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart, File)

Republican strategist and vocal Trump critic Mike Madrid noted that some data around the Haley vote is harder to parse out given that some of those primaries were not closed.

In Ohio, for example, the state’s partially open primaries mean that a voter can cast a ballot in either party’s contest, though those who cast ballots in the opposing party’s contest essentially change their registration to that party.

Still, Madrid likened the primary results to a “five-alarm fire.”

“These are very, very ominous signs for a campaign heading into a general election,” he said. “Is it fixable? Sure, it is fixable; a lot of that vote’s gonna go back. But if he loses 10 percent of the Republican base, it’s very hard, even with a third-party candidate, to see how he pulls this thing off.”

The Trump campaign largely brushed off the primary results, arguing he was unifying different voters together.

“Americans from all backgrounds, including Republicans, Independents and disillusioned Democrats, are coalescing around President Trump and joining the greatest political movement in history so we can end Joe Biden’s chaos and make America strong, safe, and successful again,” Trump campaign national press secretary Karoline Leavitt told The Hill.

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Many Republicans, too, have brushed off the votes cast for Haley on Tuesday. They argue much of the base will come home to the party this fall and that it’s too early to read into what the results mean, and they point out President Biden has also seen voters cast ballots against him in Democratic primaries.

Indeed, Biden has had to contend with concerns from within his own party about his administration’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war; voters in Michigan, Minnesota and elsewhere have cast ballots for “uncommitted” or left their ballot blank to send a signal to the president to change course on the international conflict.

Though that effort may not hurt Biden in states as reliably blue at the presidential level as Minnesota is, it raises the question of whether those supporters will return to him in November in pivotal states such as Michigan. The Great Lakes State saw 13 percent of Democratic primary voters cast a ballot for “uncommitted.”

“They’re trying to make a big deal about all the people who didn’t vote” for Biden in the primaries, and “I think it kind of levels itself out,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a Trump ally, told The Hill.

Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), another supporter of the former president, said that while the primary showcased differences among the GOP electorate, he believed those holdouts would eventually come back to the party.

“I think at the end of the day … for us, we’ve got to all come together. We got eight months to do that, and I think we will,” Tuberville told The Hill.

At the same time, Trump and Haley have given each other the cold shoulder. Trump said in a Truth Social post in January that any people who donated to Haley “will be permanently barred from the MAGA camp.”

Meanwhile, Haley has declined to officially endorse Trump in the GOP primary, even though he’s now locked up the nomination. Instead, she said during her announcement upon dropping out that “it is now up to Donald Trump to earn the votes of those in our party and beyond it who did not support him.”

Even though Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) quit the race and endorsed Trump, he reportedly voiced concerns about the former president after the fact. Some members of the party say it’s incumbent on Trump to try to court those holdouts back.

“I think primaries are primaries. You know, when you get to a head-to-head match in November, things are very different,” said Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), who supported DeSantis in the primary.

“I think the … former president will be strongest if he will go out and make a case to rally people [who] didn’t want to go behind him” he added. “If you’re pointing backwards, if you’re talking about past elections, if you’re talking about elections getting stolen … you’re punching your former running mate or whatever — opponents in the primary and all that stuff — that’s a waste of time.”

Yet even some of the former president’s critics suggest Trump is not to be underestimated.

Asked how he interpreted the results of Tuesday’s primaries where Haley received some support in Ohio and Arizona, Trump critic Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) said with a chuckle, “I’m not interpreting the results at all. Not my job.”

“Right now, Trump would win if the election were held today. We’ll see what Biden is able to pull off,” he said.