Her supporters tend to be moderate and college-educated — exactly the type of voters who have helped decide recent presidential races. We spoke to nearly 40 to see where they lean.
Katie Glueck and
Katie Glueck and Anjali Huynh interviewed nearly 40 Nikki Haley supporters in Mount Pleasant, Beaufort, Summerville and Charleston, SC
Many Americans fear a Trump-Mayden rematch, but no one feels the anxiety like a Nikki Haley voter.
“She would make a great president, and the alternatives are not attractive,” said Patti Gramling, 72, standing outside a busy early voting site Wednesday in an upscale suburb of Charleston, S.C. “Biden is too big. And I think Donald Trump is horrible.”
Ms. Haley, the former South Carolina governor, is learning the limits of relying on moderate, college-educated and skeptical voters in today’s Republican Party. Former President Donald J. Trump is widely expected to beat her, perhaps by a wide margin, in the home state primary on Saturday.
She has promised to continue, but a crucial new equation is emerging in the math of the 2024 election: Where would her voters — and voters like them in key battlegrounds across the country — go in a general election showdown between Mr. Trump and President Biden?
“The million dollar question is, are they going to vote, are they going to sit it out — or are they going to vote for Joe Biden?” Former governor Jim Hodges, Democrat of South Carolina, said of Ms. Haley’s centrist supporters in the state. “A moderate Republican voter in Charleston is not that different from a moderate Republican voter in suburban Milwaukee.”
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 like neither the two expected candidates.
“It just infuriates me that we have the choices we make,” said Roberta Gilman, a former teacher and resident of affluent Mount Pleasant, SC, who is in her 70s.
About half of those polled, including Ms. Gilman, said that in a Biden-Trump matchup, they would go with the Republican, while expressing varying degrees of discomfort. That number would almost certainly be higher in the actual results of the general election, since Americans have further retreated into partisan corners.
Others, like Ms. Gramling, made clear that Mr. Trump — who has driven many moderate and suburban voters away from his party over the past eight years — faces even more serious challenges with those Americans now.
“Everything about him bothers me – his arrogance, his lack of support from the military,” said Ms Gramling, who was also a teacher. He endorsed Mr. Trump in 2016 before endorsing Biden in 2020 and would back the Democrat over Mr. Trump again. “Everything he does is unnecessary.”
Here’s how some of these Haley voters are thinking about a choice they hope they won’t have to make:
Voters moving away from Trump
America has very few persuasive voters, and that may be especially true in a Biden-Trump rematch. Both men have been on the national stage for decades, and voters had long formed opinions about them.
But some Haley voters who said they had supported Mr Trump in 2020 stressed they would not do so again. They cited his behavior after his defeat, including his election refusal that led to the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Any erosion in 2020 in support for either Mr. Trump or Mr. Biden could prove consequential this year, especially with third-party candidates in the mix.
“If it 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 on the Republican ticket but would likely draw a match Biden-Trump. .
Asked what has changed her views of Mr. Trump since 2020, she said “the rebellion.”
“What would we do if we had another civil war?” he said. “If we can support something like this rebellion, there’s no telling what could happen.”
Mr Trump, he said, is not a politician – “he is a tyrant”.
Jeff Heikkinen, 41, an employee who lives in Summerville, SC, said he had supported Mr. Trump in the previous election but was concerned about his personal attacks on Ms. Haley, which involved her husband, a National Guardsman, and the her past as the daughter of Indian immigrants.
“She’s just trying so hard to tear people apart, making fun of her husband instead of being a grown-up,” he said. If his choices were Mr Biden and Mr Trump, he added: “I probably wouldn’t vote – I’m so disappointed in both of them.”
Joy Hunter, 64, of Summerville, declined to share how she voted in the last election — though she said she “never voted Democrat” — but ruled out supporting Mr. Trump this year, citing in part the rebellion of the Capitol.
“I know people say, ‘Just ignore his character and focus instead on what he’s done,’ but I don’t know that you can completely separate a person’s character from their policies,” Ms. Hunter said. He added of Ms. Haley, “I’m going to beg her not to give up.”
The Republicans of Cognitive Dissonance
Andrew Osborne, 58, a retired business owner from Summerville, said he disliked Mr Trump “with a passion”, declaring: “I couldn’t take four more years of him. In fact, I would probably consider leaving the country if that was our alternative.”
In theory he would consider himself a Democrat, he said, because of his moderate positions on issues such as abortion rights and gun rights.
But in a choice 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’s report that described Mr Biden as a “well-intentioned, elderly man with a bad memory” and a verbal slip Mr Biden made soon after, referring to Egypt’s president as the “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 underscored how polarized the nation has become and underscored 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 “doesn’t express my thoughts on the way business should be done”.
But if he is the Republican nominee, Mr. Mayo said, he will support him because “the Democratic Party is worse than Donald Trump.”
He’s hardly alone: A recent NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll found that 82 percent of Haley voters overall said they would support Mr. Trump if he faced Biden.
Lynn Harrison Dyer, a businesswoman in her 60s from Mount Pleasant, noted with pride that she was the daughter of a World War II veteran and said she supports Ms. Haley in part because she “honors the military.”
Mr. Trump, he noted, has humiliated veterans.
“This goes against everything I really believe,” he said. “I honor and respect the military.”
But in a Trump-Maiden contest, he said, he would support Mr. Trump, outlining concerns about Mr. Biden’s age.
Mr. Biden is 81 and Trump is 77, but polls show that the age issue tends to hurt Mr. Biden more.
“I’ve seen time and time again when he speaks – it worries me deeply,” he said, adding politely, “I mean no disrespect for his age.”
The Haley-Biden voters
South Carolina’s open primary system allows voters to enter any party’s contest. In interviews, some Democrats who voted early said they voted for Ms. Haley to try to slow Mr. Trump’s run to the nomination, not because they were sold on her candidacy.
But some voters who said they typically support Democrats added that, for now, they would prefer Ms. Haley to Mr. Biden in a hypothetical general election matchup, even though they would back him over Mr. Trump.
Their desire for change suggests both 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. “He understands world affairs. I think she is a strong leader. And I will definitely vote for a woman if I get the chance.”
She added: “I’m not as much of a Democrat as I used to be. I think it’s become a little too liberal.”
Scott Soenen, 47, a financial adviser who lives in Mount Pleasant, is a political independent who believes Ms. Haley would offer a “new change.”
He also said he was “a little concerned” about the immigration crisis, saying it “wasn’t as bad, for lack of a better term, as the Biden administration wants us to think.”
At an upscale gastropub in Beaufort, SC, on Wednesday night, Jeannie Benjamin, 63, was eating dinner after attending a peaceful sunset rally for Ms. Haley.
Ms. Haley had impressed her, she said, and despite her Democratic leanings, she worried about Mr. Biden’s ability to handle the pressures of the presidency at his age. He would be 86 at the end of a second term.
Asked about the prospect of a Biden-Trump rematch, she lamented: “That’s the problem.”
“A person is getting old and I think he has some problems,” he said. “And then the other person is the worst person on earth that you have in your White House.”
