Source: Politics<\/p>\n
Donald Trump has a problem no matter what happens in New Hampshire on Tuesday night: There\u2019s a whole swath of the Republican electorate and a good chunk of independents who appear firmly committed to not voting for him in November if he becomes the nominee.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s an issue that became starkly apparent in polling ahead of the Iowa caucuses, when an NBC News\/Des Moines Register\/Mediacom poll<\/a> of voters in that state found that fully 43 percent of Nikki Haley supporters said they would back President Joe Biden over Trump. And it\u2019s a dynamic that has been on vivid display as the campaign shifted this week to New Hampshire.<\/p>\n \u201cI can\u2019t vote for Trump. He\u2019s a crook. He\u2019s too corrupt,\u201d said Scott Simeone, 64, an independent voter from Amherst, who backed Trump in 2016 and 2020. \u201cI voted for him, and I didn\u2019t realize he\u2019s as corrupt as he is.\u201d<\/p>\n Primary elections can create intra-party divisions that, in the moment, seem impossible to heal. In 2008, a bloc of Hillary Clinton supporters started the PUMA (Party Unity My Ass) movement as a threat to never back Barack Obama after that bruising primary. Bernie Sanders\u2019 supporters vowed to never support Clinton eight years later. In 2016, Trump himself faced pushback to his nomination all the way up to the convention floor.<\/p>\n But 2024 is different. Trump is not making his pitch to voters as a first time candidate. He is a known quantity who is being judged by the electorate not for the conduct of his current campaign so much as his time in office. And that, political veterans warn, makes it much harder for him to win back the people he\u2019s alienated, including those once willing to vote Republican.<\/p>\n The data supports the idea that there are problems ahead for the former president. Even before the Iowa survey, a New York Times\/Siena College poll<\/a> found that \u2014 including independents who say they lean toward one party over the other \u2014 Biden had slightly more support among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents (91 percent) than Trump did among Republicans and GOP-leaning independents (86 percent).<\/p>\n That\u2019s far from a majority of Republicans preparing to pass on Trump in November. But in a close election, it could be enough to tip the scales for Democrats. At a minimum, it is a major liability for the GOP should the party, as expected, push Trump through as its nominee.<\/p>\n “It would be a massively difficult hill to climb, without a doubt,\u201d New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, a Haley endorser, told reporters of the party\u2019s chances of winning New Hampshire in the general election with Trump on top of the ticket, when asked by POLITICO. \u201cAnd he’s already proven that. He’s lost before and according to the polls he will lose even bigger this time.”<\/p>\n Sean Van Anglen, a prominent and early Trump supporter in the state who now plans to vote for Haley on Tuesday, said if Trump becomes the nominee, he might have to blank that line on his November ballot.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think I can vote for Trump,\u201d he said. \u201cI vote in every election, I\u2019ve never left a box blank. And I might have to this time.\u201d<\/p>\n That sentiment was not uncommon among Republicans here this week, especially among voters who came out to see Haley, the former U.N. ambassador.<\/p>\n \u201cI liked him. But he just scares me now. Everybody that has ever worked for him is not any more,\u201d said Lisa Tracy, of Salem. If it came down to Biden versus Trump, she said, \u201cI would go with Biden.\u201d<\/p>\n These problems are not entirely unique to Republicans. Biden himself is grappling with a Democratic Party where a portion of voters have soured on him and are either leaning towards or threatening to vote for a third party candidate or stay home in November.<\/p>\n \u201cWe need to keep showing that it can\u2019t just be two parties that no one fully agrees with,\u201d said Michelle Greene, a 34-year-old registered independent from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, who saw Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.), who is challenging the president in a primary, in Hampton on Sunday.<\/p>\n Greene said it\u2019s \u201cdefinitely a concern\u201d that a third-party candidate might siphon off votes from Biden in November. But she also wasn\u2019t sure if she\u2019d vote for Biden again, after backing him in 2020, in a head-to-head Biden-Trump rematch, adding that she \u201cmorally can\u2019t support the lesser of two evils.\u201d<\/p>\n How big a universe these groups of disaffected voters are could go a long way in determining the next president. But there are signs that, among independents at least, Trump is bleeding.<\/p>\n