Trump’s weaknesses with GOP voters go beyond the suburbs
Primary results from more than 1,000 counties show clear warning signs for Trump with Republican voters in exurbs and small towns.
By JESSICA PIPER and ZACH MONTELLARO
03/30/2024 07:00 AM EDT
The battle for Trump-skeptical Republican voters isn’t just about the suburbs.
It’s true that the hundreds of thousands of GOP primary voters who voted against former President Donald Trump this year were concentrated in highly educated, suburban areas that have swung blue over the past decade.
But a POLITICO analysis shows there’s also a significant bloc of voters who did not want Trump in more exurban, red-leaning counties — the kinds of places that were skeptical of Trump in the 2016 GOP primary and, while largely voting for him in the 2016 and 2020 general elections, have remained somewhat resistant to his takeover of the Republican Party.
The analysis of GOP presidential primary results from more than 1,000 counties shows warning signs for Trump, especially as Republican voters continued to vote against him in closed primaries after he clinched the nomination. And it makes clear that, while independents and crossover voters may have boosted former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley in some primaries, a chunk of true Republican voters still wished for someone else to be the party’s nominee.
“You hear a lot of moderate Republicans now who say that they’ll never vote for Trump again,” said Parker Fairbairn, county GOP chair in Emmet County, Michigan, on the northern end of the state’s Lower Peninsula, where Trump won 55 percent of the vote in the 2020 general election. In last month’s primary, he got two-thirds of the vote there.
What distinguishes Emmet County and similar geographies from the other suburban ones is their broader politics. These aren’t the kinds of suburbs on the outskirts of major cities, where wealthy, educated professionals have already fled the Republican Party.
They’re farther away from urban areas. They’re less densely populated, and they have fewer voters with college degrees. These places — which include North Carolina’s Republican-leaning exurbs, and conservative but less Trump-inclined counties several hours north of Michigan’s major cities — still vote predominantly for Republicans, both at the presidential and local levels. In 2016, when both parties held contested primaries, the Republican voters in these counties backed candidates like Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) over Trump, and in the general election they voted for Trump at lower rates than the deep-red rural areas.
Republicans are banking on the fact that partisanship usually wins out. This is far from the first contentious primary to leave bruised egos and hurt feelings, and usually the vast majority of voters come home to their party’s presidential nominee eventually. By Election Day, voters tend to return to their partisan camps.
But in a close election fought on the margins, even small shifts matter. Republicans’ success at bringing those voters back into the fold will help determine whether Trump ousts Biden from the White House. Democrats’ ability to draw away even a small percentage of the non-Trump GOP voters — or, at the very least, convince them to stay home — can help keep him there.
That push and pull sets the stage for a battle over the hundreds of thousands of non-Trump primary voters. Biden’s campaign has been overt in its overtures, including releasing an ad on Friday that featured a string of Trump’s insults of Haley and implored her supporters to join his campaign instead. If Democrats can buck historical trends, such voters could play a particularly outsize role in deciding swing states: Candidates other than Trump got at least one quarter of the Republican primary vote across more than 60 counties across North Carolina, Michigan and New Hampshire.
In Georgia, which held several weeks of early voting before Haley dropped out, Trump struggled among early voters in key areas, including Cobb County, a longtime GOP stronghold that has swung sharply toward Democrats over the past two presidential elections.
And in Arizona and Florida, two states with closed Republican primaries that voted after Trump became the party’s presumptive nominee, candidates other than the former president still got around 20 percent of the vote.
“We will pick up a few of these Republicans, I believe that,” said Sam Edney, Democratic county chair in North Carolina’s Transylvania County, a county southwest of Asheville where Trump got 67 percent of the GOP primary vote this year.
“I also hope a substantial number simply don’t vote in the Trump and Mark Robinson races, that will help Democrats as well,” he added, referencing the Republican gubernatorial nominee, who is an ally of the former president. “You know, it’s politics.”
The challenge for Democrats is overcoming the partisan polarization that has come to dominate elections, and Republican voters’ deep skepticism of Biden. The reality is that many Republican primary voters are, in matters of ideology and policy, closer to Trump than the Democratic president. That makes crossing party lines a tough sell, despite the aversion toward Trump that Democrats are hoping to capitalize on.
Primary results from more than 1,000 counties show clear warning signs for Trump with Republican voters in exurbs and small towns.
By JESSICA PIPER and ZACH MONTELLARO
03/30/2024 07:00 AM EDT
The battle for Trump-skeptical Republican voters isn’t just about the suburbs.
It’s true that the hundreds of thousands of GOP primary voters who voted against former President Donald Trump this year were concentrated in highly educated, suburban areas that have swung blue over the past decade.
But a POLITICO analysis shows there’s also a significant bloc of voters who did not want Trump in more exurban, red-leaning counties — the kinds of places that were skeptical of Trump in the 2016 GOP primary and, while largely voting for him in the 2016 and 2020 general elections, have remained somewhat resistant to his takeover of the Republican Party.
The analysis of GOP presidential primary results from more than 1,000 counties shows warning signs for Trump, especially as Republican voters continued to vote against him in closed primaries after he clinched the nomination. And it makes clear that, while independents and crossover voters may have boosted former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley in some primaries, a chunk of true Republican voters still wished for someone else to be the party’s nominee.
“You hear a lot of moderate Republicans now who say that they’ll never vote for Trump again,” said Parker Fairbairn, county GOP chair in Emmet County, Michigan, on the northern end of the state’s Lower Peninsula, where Trump won 55 percent of the vote in the 2020 general election. In last month’s primary, he got two-thirds of the vote there.
What distinguishes Emmet County and similar geographies from the other suburban ones is their broader politics. These aren’t the kinds of suburbs on the outskirts of major cities, where wealthy, educated professionals have already fled the Republican Party.
They’re farther away from urban areas. They’re less densely populated, and they have fewer voters with college degrees. These places — which include North Carolina’s Republican-leaning exurbs, and conservative but less Trump-inclined counties several hours north of Michigan’s major cities — still vote predominantly for Republicans, both at the presidential and local levels. In 2016, when both parties held contested primaries, the Republican voters in these counties backed candidates like Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) over Trump, and in the general election they voted for Trump at lower rates than the deep-red rural areas.
Republicans are banking on the fact that partisanship usually wins out. This is far from the first contentious primary to leave bruised egos and hurt feelings, and usually the vast majority of voters come home to their party’s presidential nominee eventually. By Election Day, voters tend to return to their partisan camps.
But in a close election fought on the margins, even small shifts matter. Republicans’ success at bringing those voters back into the fold will help determine whether Trump ousts Biden from the White House. Democrats’ ability to draw away even a small percentage of the non-Trump GOP voters — or, at the very least, convince them to stay home — can help keep him there.
That push and pull sets the stage for a battle over the hundreds of thousands of non-Trump primary voters. Biden’s campaign has been overt in its overtures, including releasing an ad on Friday that featured a string of Trump’s insults of Haley and implored her supporters to join his campaign instead. If Democrats can buck historical trends, such voters could play a particularly outsize role in deciding swing states: Candidates other than Trump got at least one quarter of the Republican primary vote across more than 60 counties across North Carolina, Michigan and New Hampshire.
In Georgia, which held several weeks of early voting before Haley dropped out, Trump struggled among early voters in key areas, including Cobb County, a longtime GOP stronghold that has swung sharply toward Democrats over the past two presidential elections.
And in Arizona and Florida, two states with closed Republican primaries that voted after Trump became the party’s presumptive nominee, candidates other than the former president still got around 20 percent of the vote.
“We will pick up a few of these Republicans, I believe that,” said Sam Edney, Democratic county chair in North Carolina’s Transylvania County, a county southwest of Asheville where Trump got 67 percent of the GOP primary vote this year.
“I also hope a substantial number simply don’t vote in the Trump and Mark Robinson races, that will help Democrats as well,” he added, referencing the Republican gubernatorial nominee, who is an ally of the former president. “You know, it’s politics.”
The challenge for Democrats is overcoming the partisan polarization that has come to dominate elections, and Republican voters’ deep skepticism of Biden. The reality is that many Republican primary voters are, in matters of ideology and policy, closer to Trump than the Democratic president. That makes crossing party lines a tough sell, despite the aversion toward Trump that Democrats are hoping to capitalize on.
