Independents: aces in the hole
Nikki Haley, despite riding a wave of support following her two outstanding debate performances, faces a near-impossible path to overtake Donald Trump. But the former UN ambassador might have an ace in the hole that could confound experts: independent voters.
Haley has become the latest new thing for Republicans desperate to defeat the former president. She is now a clear third in Iowa, and has surpassed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to move into second in New Hampshire. Her fundraising is picking up steam, raising $11 million from July to September across her various committees. She has what every other challenger lacks: forward momentum.
Her problem is that even that is not likely to be enough to unseat
King Donald. The former president not only leads her by 50 points but also is likely to crush her in a one-on-one race.
A recent poll by FairVote and WPA Intelligence demonstrates this. It uses ranked-choice voting, which asks respondents to rank all the candidates in order of preference. The pollsters then remove the lowest-scoring candidates one by one, reallocating their supporters to those voters’ next-highest choices. This allows the pollsters to test every challenger Trump might face in a one-on-one scenario.
Trump, who received 48 percent of firstchoice votes, beats them all. He also annihilated Haley 62-38 when the rest of the field was winnowed out. That’s mainly because 40 percent of DeSantis voters name Trump as their second choice, and others surely ranked Trump ahead of Haley on their ballot.
That shouldn’t be surprising given her campaign strategy. Her position on abortion—avoid federal abortion bans that cannot obtain Democratic support—is not what pro-life voters want to hear. She strongly supports continued military aid to Ukraine and is very hawkish toward Iran. She might have served in Trump’s administration, but she is clearly running on a pre-Trump Republican platform.
But there is a possibility that the polls are massively wrong. If last year’s GOP primaries in Georgia are any indication, Haley’s chances might be higher than expected.
Trump went all-in to defeat Republican Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger because of their refusal to interfere in Georgia’s 2020 election results. He endorsed their opponents and held rallies in the state. He argued that they caved to Democrats and allowed them to steal the election from him. That belief is false, but early polls suggested it was effective, reducing the incumbent governor’s lead to only 19 points, according to the RealClearPolitics polling average.
In the end, Kemp won by 52 points. That’s one of the biggest polling errors in history.
Haley’s hopes rest on replicating this feat. She already tends to poll better among moderates and independents. If that trend grows, she can position herself as the only person who could prevent a TrumpBiden rematch, which voters are desperate to avoid. She doesn’t have to become a liberal to accomplish this; she simply would have to do what Kemp did: Show she is a sensible conservative who could stand in the way of Trump’s tirades.
This strategy would focus on the 31 states and territories that either do not have party registration, such as Georgia, or that allow registered independents to vote in Republican primaries, such as New Hampshire. These states have a combined 1,322 Republican delegates, a majority of the 2,470 that will attend the GOP convention.
Win most of these and some of the states elected only by Republicans, and Haley could eke out a majority on the convention floor. It’s a narrow path to the nomination, but it’s not impossible.