Their supporters tend to be moderates and college-educated – exactly the kind of voters who weighed in on the last presidential election. We spoke to almost 40 people to find out where they are leaning.
Katie Glueck And
Katie Glueck and Anjali Huynh interviewed nearly 40 Nikki Haley fans in Mount Pleasant, Beaufort, Summerville and Charleston, SC
February 24, 2024
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Many Americans fear a rematch between Trump and Biden, but no one feels the fear more than a Nikki Haley voter.
“She would be a great president, and the alternatives are not enticing,” Patti Gramling, 72, said as she stood outside a busy early voting site in an upscale suburb of Charleston, South Carolina, on Wednesday. “Biden is too old.” And I think Donald Trump is terrible.”
Ms. Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, is learning the limits of relying on moderate, college-educated, Trump-skeptical voters in today’s Republican Party. Former President Donald J. Trump is widely expected to defeat her, perhaps by a wide margin, in Saturday’s primary election in her home state.
She has vowed to move on, but a crucial new equation is emerging in the 2024 election math: Where would her voters — and voters like her in key battlegrounds across the country — go in a general election between Mr. Trump and President Biden?
“The million-dollar question is: Will they vote, will they sit it out — or will they vote for Joe Biden?” Former Gov. Jim Hodges, a South Carolina Democrat, said of Ms. Haley’s centrist supporters in the state. “A moderate Republican voter in Charleston is not much different than a moderate Republican voter in the Milwaukee suburbs.”
In recent interviews with nearly 40 Haley supporters across South Carolina’s Lowcountry, conducted mostly in historically more moderate enclaves of the state, many fell into what pollsters call the camp of “double haters” – voters who don’t support either candidate like.
“It just makes me angry that we have the choice we have,” said Roberta Gilman, a former teacher and resident of affluent Mount Pleasant, S.C., who is in her 70s.
About half of respondents, including Ms. Gilman, said they would side with the Republican in a Biden-Trump matchup, but expressed varying degrees of discomfort. That number would almost certainly be higher in the actual general election results, now that Americans have retreated further into partisan corners.
Others, like Ms. Gramling, made clear that Mr. Trump — who has driven many moderate and suburban voters from his party over the past eight years — now faces even greater challenges with these Americans.
“Everything about him bothers me — his arrogance, his lack of support for the military,” said Ms. Gramling, who was also a teacher. She supported Mr. Trump in 2016 before supporting Mr. Biden in 2020 and would again support the Democrat over Mr. Trump. “Everything he does is inappropriate.”
Here’s how some of these Haley voters reflect on a decision they hope they don’t have to make:
Voters dissenting from Trump
America has very few persuadeable voters left, and that is likely to be particularly the case in a rematch between Biden and Trump. Both men have been on the national stage for decades, and voters formed opinions about them long ago.
But some Haley voters who said they supported Mr. Trump in 2020 stressed they would not do so again. They cited his behavior after his defeat, including his election denial, which led to the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
A decline in support for Mr. Trump or Mr. Biden in 2020 could prove consequential this year, especially if third-party candidates are in play.
“If he was my choice or Biden was my choice, I wouldn’t have a choice,” said Julia Trout, 55, of Mount Pleasant, adding that she has always voted Republican but would likely sit out a Biden-Trump matchup .
Asked what had changed her views of Mr. Trump since 2020, she replied: “The insurrection.”
“What would we do if there was another civil war?” she said. “If we can support something like this uprising, there’s no telling what could happen.”
Mr. Trump, she said, is not a politician — “he’s a tyrant.”
Jeff Heikkinen, 41, a caddy who lives in Summerville, S.C., said he had supported Mr. Trump in previous elections but was troubled by his personal attacks on Ms. Haley, who is her husband, a National Guardsman, and her background as a daughter by Haley concerned Indian immigrants.
“He just tries so hard to break people up, makes fun of her husband instead of being mature,” he said. If his choice were Mr Biden and Mr Trump, he added: “I probably wouldn’t vote – I’m just so disillusioned with both of them.”
Joy Hunter, 64, of Summerville, declined to share how she voted in the last election – although she said she “never voted Democrat” – but ruled out supporting Mr. Trump this year, citing partly to the insurrection at the Capitol.
“I know people say, ‘Just ignore his character and focus instead on what he did,’ but I don’t know that you can completely separate a person’s character from their policies,” Ms. Hunter said. She added of Ms. Haley: “I will beg her not to get out.”
The Republicans with cognitive dissonance
Andrew Osborne, 58, a retired business owner from Summerville, said he hated Mr. Trump “with a passion,” declaring, “I couldn’t stand another four years of him.” In fact, I would probably consider leaving the country if that would be our alternative.”
Given his moderate positions on issues such as abortion and gun rights, he would theoretically consider running as a Democrat, he said.
But in an election between Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden, he said he would still vote for the Republican, citing concerns about Mr. Biden’s age.
Mr. Osborne pointed to the release of a special counsel report that described Mr. Biden as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” and a verbal gaffe Mr. Biden made shortly thereafter, describing the president of Egypt as the referred to as “President of Mexico.”
“He’s a similar age to my father-in-law and I love him to death, but I wouldn’t trust him to make me a cup of coffee,” Mr Osborne said. “This is the commander-in-chief of the last superpower.”
The interviews highlighted how polarized the nation has become and highlighted the limits of Mr. Biden’s bipartisan appeal, which he had in small but significant ways in 2020.
Joe Mayo, 72, a retired nuclear plant operator who now lives in Mount Pleasant, called Mr. Trump “arrogant” and “stupid” and said he did not “represent my thoughts about how business should be done.”
But if he is the Republican nominee, Mayo said, he will still support him because “the Democratic Party is worse than Donald Trump.”
He’s hardly alone: A recent NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll found that a total of 82 percent of Haley voters said they would support Mr. Trump if he faced Mr. Biden.
Lynn Harrison Dyer, a businesswoman in her 60s from Mount Pleasant, proudly noted that she is the daughter of a World War II veteran and said she supported Ms. Haley in part because she “honors the military.”
She noted that Mr. Trump has denigrated veterans.
“This goes against everything I really believe,” she said. “I honor and respect the military.”
But in a Trump-Biden contest, she said she would support Mr. Trump, describing her concerns about Mr. Biden’s age.
Mr. Biden is 81 and Mr. Trump is 77, but polls show the age issue tends to hurt Mr. Biden more.
“I’ve seen it time and time again when he speaks – it worries me greatly,” she said, adding politely: “I don’t mean the slightest disrespect to his age.”
The Haley Biden voters
South Carolina’s open primary system allows voters to participate in either party’s election campaign. In interviews, some Democrats who voted early said they voted for Ms. Haley to slow Mr. Trump’s march to the nomination, not because they were confident in her candidacy.
But a number of voters who said they normally support Democrats added that in a hypothetical general election matchup they would for now prefer Ms. Haley over Mr. Biden, even though they would support him over Mr. Trump.
Their desire for change suggests both a weakness for Mr. Biden and a missed opportunity for Republicans.
“I like Nikki Haley,” said Brenda LaMont, 65, an options trader who lives in Charleston. “She understands world events. I think she is a strong leader. And I will definitely choose a woman if I get the chance.”
And she added: “I’m not as democratic as I used to be. I do think it’s become a bit too liberal.”
Scott Soenen, 47, a financial adviser who lives in Mount Pleasant, is a political independent who believes Ms. Haley would offer a “fresh change.”
He also said he was “just a little” worried about the refugee crisis, saying it was “not, for lack of a better term, as bad as the Biden administration would have us believe.”
At an upscale gastropub in Beaufort, S.C., Jeannie Benjamin, 63, had dinner Wednesday evening after attending a quiet sunset rally for Ms. Haley.
Ms. Haley impressed her, she said, and despite her Democratic leanings, she was concerned about Mr. Biden’s ability to handle the pressures of the presidency at his age. At the end of a second term he would be 86 years old.
Asked about the prospect of a rematch between Biden and Trump, she lamented: “That’s the problem.”
“One is getting old and I think he has some problems,” she said. “And then the other one is the worst person in the world that exists in your White House.”
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2024-02-25 18:09:17
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