US presidential elections 2024: Donald Trump has won over South Carolina Republicans as a candidate whose voters believe can win in November, keep the country safe and have the mental capacity to be president.
Asset On the road to victory in the South Carolina primary with the support of a nearly unwavering base of loyal voters. AP VoteCast found that state Republicans are broadly aligned with Trump’s goals: many question the point of supporting Ukraine’s struggle against Russia; An overwhelming majority sees immigrants as harming the United States and suspects that Trump’s multiple criminal indictments have nefarious political motives.
Even in her home state of South Carolina, where she was once governor, Nikki Haley He seemed to have little chance against Trump. Only about half of Republican voters had a favorable opinion of her, while about seven in ten had a positive opinion of Trump.
About 6 in 10 South Carolina voters consider themselves supporters of the “Make America Great Again” movement, a Trump slogan that helped propel him to the White House in 2016. About 9 in 10 Trump voters said They were motivated by their support. not by objections to his adversary. Haley’s voters were much more divided: About 6 in 10 were motivated by her support, but about 4 in 10 opposed Trump.
AP voting is a survey of more than 2,400 voters participating in Saturday’s Republican primary in South Carolina, conducted for the Associated Press by NORC at the University of Chicago.
HOW TRUMP WON IN SOUTH CAROLINA
Trump’s victory in South Carolina looks remarkably like his own. wins in Iowa caucuses And the New Hampshire primary. It’s a sign that the regional differences that once existed within the GOP have been supplanted by a national movement that largely revolves around the former president.
Trump, 77, won in South Carolina with white voters and no college degrees, one of his key constituencies. About two-thirds of Trump’s supporters in this election belonged to this group.
The majority believe that Trump – but not Haley – is a candidate capable of winning the November general election. Voters were also much more likely to view Trump than Haley as someone who would “stand up and fight for people like you” and say he would keep the country safe. And about three-quarters of them say he has the mental capacity to serve effectively as president.
Trump voters also supported his more nationalist views: They are more likely than Haley’s supporters to have a lukewarm view of the NATO alliance or even view it as bad for the United States, saying that immigrants are harming the country and to say that immigration is the main problem facing the country. country.
THE POLITICAL FUTURE OF NIKKI HALEY
At 52, Haley bet she could offer generational change to the GOP. But the future she articulated has little basis in today’s Republican Party, even in South Carolina, where she has already won two terms as governor. Nearly half of South Carolina voters — including about 6 in 10 of those who support Trump — say they have an unfavorable opinion of her.
Haley said she will stay in the race until at least the Super Tuesday primaries, although so far there is no indication that it has disrupted Trump’s momentum. She struggled to convince the core of the Republican Party that she was a better choice than the former president – losing most conservatives and those without college degrees to Trump.
What is his coalition? Haley dominated among South Carolina voters who said correctly that Democrat Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election. About three-quarters of his supporters say Biden was legitimately elected president in 2020, and about 4 in 10 voted for Biden in that election. His problem is that about 6 in 10 Republican primary voters say they think Biden was not legitimately elected.
TRUMP’S POTENTIAL WEAKNESSES IN A GENERAL ELECTION
Trump has an iron grip on the Republican base, but that coalition may not be enough to guarantee victory in the November general election.
South Carolina was an opportunity to show he could broaden his coalition beyond white, older, non-college-educated voters. But nearly 9 in 10 voters in South Carolina’s primary were white, making it difficult to know whether Trump made inroads with the black voters he tried to convince.
Trump also split the college graduate vote with Haley, a relative weakness that could matter in November as college graduates make up a growing share of the overall electorate. Even though Republican voters in South Carolina believe Trump can win in November, some worry about his viability.
About 4 in 10 Republican voters in South Carolina — including 2 in 10 of his supporters — worry that Trump is too extremist to win the general election. About 3 in 10 voters think he acted illegally in at least one of the criminal cases against him, although more than 7 in 10 think the investigations are political attempts to undermine him.
Trump dominates among conservative voters. But his challenge is that these voters made up only 37% of the voting body in the November 2020 presidential election. The remaining 63% identified as moderate or liberal, the two categories Trump lost to Haley in Carolina. South.