Donald Trump’s Republican primary problem is getting worse not better
Donald Trump had a really rough go of it in the 2024 Republican primary race, never getting more than about 50% of the vote when there were still other candidates in the race. But now Trump no longer has any primary opponents, it should finally be smooth sailing for him, right? As it turns out, no.
On Tuesday the crucial swing state of Pennsylvania had its Republican primary election. Nikki Haley ended up getting about 25% of the Republican primary vote in one of the most crucial counties, and about 17% of the vote statewide, even though she dropped out a month and a half ago.
This isn’t a sign of some kind of enduring popularity on Haley’s part. It’s simply that she was the last one to drop out, her name was still on the ballot, and a whole lot of Republican voters wanted to make a very loud statement against Trump. If Haley hadn’t been on the primary ballot, they’d have voted for whoever else was. These are the kind of core Republicans who vote in primaries, yet they’re this adamant that they don’t want Trump to be their nominee.
If the Republican Party is indeed stupid enough to let Trump have the nomination at this summer’s Republican National Convention, this is what the party will be up against in the general election. They’ll have a presidential nominee who’s so toxically unpopular, even within his own party, that he just lost one out of every six votes in a one-man primary race in a pivotal swing state.
The longer this goes on, where Trump keeps losing a large percentage of Republican primary votes to former candidates who dropped out a long time ago, the worse of a sign it is for Trump. Yet Trump isn’t just failing to win over these voters as the primary goes on. They’re more adamant about damaging Trump than ever.
