Former President Trump is coasting to the GOP presidential nomination, but the trip has exposed some real obstacles in his path to winning back the White House.
In New Hampshire, Trump’s easy win over rival Republican Nikki Haley masked a weakness with independent voters.
In South Carolina, Trump trounced the former governor in her home state, but his win also cast a spotlight on the large swath of moderate Republicans who aren’t backing him.
Haley performed better than Trump in suburban areas that will play a critical role in November, and she also did better than Trump with more moderate voters. Roughly 40 percent of Haley voters indicated their vote was in opposition to Trump, a sign the former president has work to do before November’s general election.
“He’s effectively the presumptive nominee, but there’s still a lot of Republicans who would prefer somebody else, and I think that is a challenge for him,” said Alex Conant, who worked on Sen. Marco Rubio’s (R-Fla.) 2016 presidential campaign.
“Once we get into the general election and Republicans don’t have a choice, some of those voters will come home, but in a close election, those voters are why Trump lost in 2020,” Conant added. “I think it is problematic, and it’s striking how Trump has done nothing to expand his appeal since 2020.”
Trump won Saturday’s South Carolina primary with 60 percent of the vote to Haley’s 40 percent. He has won each of the first four GOP primary contests, and his campaign has projected he could win the delegates needed to clinch the nomination no later than March 19.
Exit polls reflected Trump’s domination of the Republican base, and they underscored that his supporters had made their minds up about voting for the former president months in advance.
But exit polls also showed Trump’s march to the nomination is unlikely to translate to a general election romp.
Haley performed considerably better than Trump among moderate voters, which is likely to be the most critical group in determining November’s election. Haley ran even with Trump among college graduates, another group Trump has traditionally struggled to win over.
The former South Carolina governor also led Trump among voters who oppose a national abortion ban, which could prove problematic for Trump given his reported support for a 16-week ban on the procedure and his boasts about ending Roe v. Wade.
While Trump has argued Democrats were able to vote in South Carolina’s primary, exit polls found only 5 percent of GOP primary voters identified as Democrats.
“When he says this is the most united Republican party he’s ever seen, it is not the most united Republican Party, and 59 percent of those Haley voters said they’re not voting for him,” Marc Thiessen, a former George W. Bush White House official, said Monday on Fox News.
Haley has vowed to remain in the race despite her lack of a path to winning the nomination, and her inability to win a single state so far.
The former ambassador to the United Nations has argued it’s significant that 40 percent of primary voters did not back Trump.
“I’m an accountant. I know 40 percent isn’t 50 percent. But I also know that 40 percent is not a small number. Americans deserve a choice in this election, and I have a duty to give it to them,” Haley said following her loss in South Carolina.
The Trump campaign has dismissed analysis of primary exit polls that suggest any problems for him.
They instead point to general election polling that shows the former president ahead of President Biden in a hypothetical general election match-up at the national level and in key swing states.
Trump senior adviser Jason Miller on Monday highlighted polling averages from RealClearPolitics that showed Trump leading Biden by roughly 5 percentage points in Arizona, 7 points in Georgia, 5 points in Michigan and 8 points in Nevada.
Polling has shown a much closer race in Wisconsin, and recent polls out of Pennsylvania have Biden ahead there.
Biden campaign officials have long asserted Trump’s numbers will suffer once more voters begin paying closer attention and realize the former president is the Republican nominee.
In the days before Saturday’s primary, Trump had to contend with an Alabama court ruling that threatened the future of in vitro fertilization access in the state, a trickle-down effect from the decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.
On the day of the primary, he told a group of Black conservatives that he felt his own criminal indictments gave him more credibility with Black voters.
It’s those types of comments that Biden campaign officials believe will remind voters why they won’t support Trump in November.
“We all have more to do to push towards a more perfect union, but Trump wants to take us backwards,” Biden said in a statement after the GOP primary in South Carolina.
Biden is not without his own problems, though. A sizable number of Michigan Democrats are expected to vote “uncommitted” in Tuesday’s primary in a show of dissatisfaction with the president’s handling of the Israel-Hamas conflict.
Ultimately, strategists said November is likely to be a close election either way, meaning small gains or losses on the margin could prove decisive.
“I think virtually every American has made up their mind about Trump and Biden,” Conant said. “It’s hard to imagine an election where we’ve had fewer undecided voters. It’s a cliché, but it will come down to turnout in a handful of states, and what matters there is how motivated each side is.”