Donald Trump falters in New Hampshire primary, showing cracks in GOP base

Former president Donald Trump has underperformed in tonight’s New Hampshire Republican presidential primary, winning 54.4% of the vote over former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley, who won 43.3%, at the time of publication.

Trump’s 11.1% victory over Haley fell far short of state polls, which showed him winning on average by 17.6%. His performance also reveals cracks in his Republican base, especially as moderate voters and Haley supporters signal an unwillingness to support him in the November general election.

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Haley is likely to stay in the race until the February 24 South Carolina primary in the state where she formerly served as governor. If Trump beats her there, her campaign will likely end.

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In the lead-up to the New Hampshire primary, Trump began referring to Haley as “Nimbra,” a deliberate mispronunciation of her birth name, Nimarata Nikki Randhawa, meant to highlight her Indian ethnic heritage. He has also repeated “birther” claims, similar to those he regularly invoked against former President Barack Obama, claiming that Haley is ineligible to run for president because her parents weren’t U.S. citizens at the time of her birth. There is no requirement that one’s parents be U.S. citizens in order to run for president.

Trump’s use of racist rhetoric isn’t new, and Haley has recently created her own mini-scandals by claiming that America has never been “a racist country” and that the 1861 Civil War wasn’t about slavery. But Trump’s continued use of racism may make him less attractive to moderate and independent voters who already feel unenthusiastic about supporting him.

An estimated 40% of voters of color vote Democrat — fewer than 20% vote Republican. Attacking Haley’s intelligence as a “bird brain” — like Trump has done — won’t likely win over women either. An estimated 56% of female registered voters lean Democrat, while 38% identify as Republican, the Pew Research Center found.

National Republican polls aren’t in Trump’s favor, they’re in Biden’s

Numerous political observers have noticed that only 110,000 voters participated in last week’s Iowa Republican caucus — much fewer than the 187,000 who participated in the last Iowa GOP primary in 2016. Freezing temperatures contributed to the lower turnout, but those 110,000 participants represent just 15% of the state’s registered Republican voters. The 56,520 Iowans who voted for Trump represent just 7.8% of the state’s Republican voters.

Turnout for the Iowa caucuses is always low, but a recent poll of Iowa voters found that 43% of Haley supporters said they’d vote for President Joe Biden instead of Trump. Such divisions are common during a heated primary, and supporters of failed candidates often end up supporting the party nominee in the general election.

However, Trump’s surrogate Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) has said the Republican party needs to “eradicate” Haley and her supporters from the party, a sentiment that is unlikely to win them over to Trump.

The lack of enthusiasm for Trump also extends to independent voters and young Republicans. Two recent New York Times polls have shown that independent voters prefer Biden over Trump by anywhere from 5% to 12%, a margin that would translate into millions of votes to help Biden defeat Trump, just like he did in 2020.

A December poll from the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics found that 66% of young Democratic voters plan to “definitely vote” in 2024, while the same is only true of 56% of young Republican voters and 31% of young Independent ones. Nearly 50% of young people voted in 2020 — their turnout this year could determine the next presidency.

Trump ran as an anti-establishment strongman candidate in 2016, pledging that only he could “drain the swamp” of inefficiency and corruption in Washington D.C. However, Trump is a known quantity in 2024, and many voters remember the chaotic bluster and numerous political scandals of his past presidency — and they’re not eager to repeat it.

“[Overcoming his negative perception] would be a massively difficult hill to climb, without a doubt,” New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu (R), a Haley supporter, told Politico. “And he’s already proven that. He’s lost before and according to the polls he will lose even bigger this time.”

Currently, national polls show Biden beating Trump in a general election, a result that would drastically change if Trump is convicted of the 91 criminal charges currently facing him. Trump and Biden both suffer from low favorability ratings and 59% of voters have said they’re not enthusiastic about an eventual Trump-Biden rematch.

But few people enjoy electoral sequels, and those numbers are likely to change as the general election looms closer and more voters remember that the very future of our Democracy hangs in the balance.