All three remaining major candidates for president could, to some degree, benefit from Nikki Haley’s exit.
Now that the final major GOP challenger, Nikki Haley, has suspended her presidential run, the three remaining major candidates are vying for her voters.
At about the time that Ms. Haley announced her departure from the 2024 race on March 6, the Republican frontrunner, former President Donald Trump, and the Democrat incumbent, President Joe Biden, each made a public statement welcoming Ms. Haley’s supporters to change their allegiance.
The most prominent independent candidate, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., made no similar outright appeal to Ms. Haley’s voters. Instead, he pointed out that polls have shown that many U.S. voters dread a Biden-Trump rematch, and he presented himself as an alternative for voters seeking “hope and healing” and “an inspiring vision for America.”
All three major candidates will benefit in some measure from Ms. Haley’s departure from the race, as hurdles loom for each of them.
Mr. Kennedy is saddled with collecting massive numbers of signatures to meet the ballot-qualifying thresholds that states set for independent candidates.
Citing the network’s research in multiple Super Tuesday states, ABC News reported, “Super Tuesday exit poll results showed challenges for Joe Biden and Donald Trump alike, including broad, substantive gaps between Trump and Nikki Haley voters.”
Leaning Left?
At least half of Ms. Haley’s voters in Virginia and North Carolina “said they approve of Biden’s work as president, as did 30 percent in California,” ABC News reported, suggesting that those voters would lean toward casting ballots for President Biden rather than President Trump.
Even so, pollster Rich Baris told The Epoch Times that he doubts that the Haley voting bloc would exert much influence over the race’s outcome.
“Haley’s primary vote is largely made up of ’resistance’ voters and a rather small percentage of Republican voters who would’ve rather had a different choice than the former president,” he said. “The latter will come home and unify behind the Republican nominee. The former will do what they told exit pollsters: support the Democrat as they did in 2020.”
A key point, he said, is that “the general election polling data suggest Trump doesn’t need to do much to snare voters who didn’t vote for him in the primary.”
By Janice Hisle
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