Donald Trump may have secured the Republican presidential nomination, but Nikki Haley—who dropped out of the race two weeks ago—is still proving to be a thorn in his side.
Trump easily won the five Republican primaries held Tuesday night in Florida, Illinois, Ohio, Arizona, and Kansas. But he failed to garner anything close to unanimous party support.
Instead, Haley managed to rack up more than 500,000 votes. And that’s in addition to the nearly three million votes she won while she was still running, including sweeping the primaries in Vermont and Washington, D.C., both Democratic strongholds.
It’s likely that some of the votes Haley received Tuesday were cast early, before she dropped out of the race. But the fact that she continues to nip at Trump’s heels is a sign that he is struggling to unite his voter base.
Although Haley embraced political stances that, in many cases, were just as extreme as Trump’s, she appealed to more moderate Republicans and Never Trump voters. Some Haley voters are bound to vote for Trump, but those who are more centrist or independent aren’t guaranteed to jump to his support.
“The Haley voters are the swing voters of the 2024 election,” Marc Thiessen, the chief speech writer for former President George W. Bush, told Fox News last week. “Trump has to win them over, he has to pivot now to the general election and focus on uniting the party and the non-MAGA part of the GOP.”
“What Trump needs to understand is that MAGA voters are not going to decide this election.”
When Haley dropped out, she did not endorse Trump in her resignation speech. Instead, she urged the former president to “earn the votes” of all Republican and independent voters.
Trump, however, has made a hard pivot to the right. He has somehow become even more extreme than during his first term, garnering comparisons to Adolf Hitler and other authoritarian leaders. And while that has certainly played well with his most loyal supporters, it would seem he is failing to successfully court anyone else.
