Source: Politics<\/p>\n
MANCHESTER, New Hampshire \u2014 Donald Trump thumped Nikki Haley in New Hampshire \u2014 but anti-Trump Republicans are hardly upset about it.<\/p>\n
Even after Trump went two-for-two in the early nominating contests, the non-Trump movement sees increasingly positive signs that the former president can be beat in November.<\/p>\n
Polls and exit surveys from Iowa and New Hampshire show swaths of the Republican electorate cast ballots specifically against Trump \u2014 and would refuse to vote for him in November. Independents who helped hand Trump a general election loss in 2020 helped fuel record turnout in New Hampshire\u2019s GOP primary. And Trump didn\u2019t make major strides in either state in the highly educated areas where he was weakest in 2016.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was definitely not a good night for Donald Trump,\u201d Mike Madrid, a California GOP strategist and co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBy most metrics, the path to [stopping Trump] has become much clearer,\u201d Madrid said. \u201cThe anti-Trump lane is discernible. It\u2019s palpable. It\u2019s big. It\u2019s something that we can work with in a real, meaningful way.\u201d<\/p>\n
On the surface, the results from Iowa and New Hampshire look just plain bad for the anti-Trump movement. A former president facing 91 criminal charges and splitting his time between the courtroom and the campaign trail won over 50 percent of the vote in both states. In New Hampshire, where the GOP field quickly shrunk to two, independent voters, who exit polls showed broke overwhelmingly for Haley, were trumped by Trump\u2019s GOP base.<\/p>\n
The next two contests offer even less hope for impeding Trump\u2019s march toward the nomination. Haley is not competing for delegates in Nevada. And Trump leads her by double digits in polls of her home state of South Carolina.<\/p>\n
Leaders of the effort to warn voters about a second Trump term say that focusing on the primary is a lost cause. They argue that Trump\u2019s nomination is inevitable and that the focus should shift \u2014 now \u2014 to trying to defeat him in the general election.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s all doom and gloom in the primary,\u201d said Charlie Sykes, a conservative Wisconsin political commentator. \u201cBut this has been predictable for a long time now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s detractors point to data from Iowa and New Hampshire that show some warning signs for Trump, particularly among independents and more moderate Republicans. In New Hampshire, 64 percent of undeclared voters sided with Haley, according to exit polls.<\/p>\n
A pre-caucus NBC News\/Des Moines Register\/Mediacom poll<\/a> of voters in Iowa found that 43 percent of Haley supporters said they would back President Joe Biden over Trump.<\/p>\n And in New Hampshire, 46 percent of GOP primary voters said they would be dissatisfied if Trump became the GOP nominee, and 35 percent said they would not vote for him in November<\/a>.<\/p>\n Exit polls also showed four out of 10 people who cast a ballot for Haley in New Hampshire said they did so out of distaste for Trump<\/a>. And 94 percent of Haley\u2019s voters said they would be dissatisfied if Trump won the nomination<\/a>.<\/p>\n Fully half of Iowa\u2019s Republican caucusgoers said they did not identify<\/a> as part of Trump\u2019s \u201cMake America Great Again\u201d movement. Even more \u2014 63 percent \u2014 said the same in New Hampshire<\/a>.<\/p>\n That significant chunks of voters from two disparate (though still overwhelmingly white) electorates showed similar resistance to Trump is encouraging to both Sykes and Madrid.<\/p>\n \u201cLooking at these numbers and Trump\u2019s general approval [ratings] amongst Republicans and also election results from the last three elections, they are all pointing in a direction of getting worse for Trump \u2014 not better,\u201d Madrid said.<\/p>\n Fergus Cullen, a \u201cNever Trump\u201d Republican and former New Hampshire Republican Party chair who voted for Haley on Tuesday, called those statistics \u201cthe best result from yesterday.\u201d<\/p>\n Citing the 35 percent of voters who said they wouldn\u2019t vote for Trump in the general election, Cullen said, \u201cImagine if 35 percent of GOP elected officials said the same thing. \u2026 Those of us who oppose Trump may not be able to prevent his renomination, but we should be able to prevent him winning a general.\u201d<\/p>\n Still, Trump has defied political gravity before, and many Trump critics after he left office once believed he was unlikely to win renomination. Cullen said Trump \u201cdoes have some ability to find new voters and expand the electorate.\u201d<\/p>\n Even though Biden and Trump have declared the general election effectively underway, Haley has not. The former South Carolina governor has vowed to continue on through Super Tuesday, where her campaign argues a slate of open and semi-open primaries will give her a fighting chance.<\/p>\n And some Never Trumpers aren\u2019t ready to look ahead to the general election yet. They want her to keep going.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s tons and tons of ammunition for her to make the case that [Trump] is unfit to be president,\u201d said Gordon Humphrey, a former U.S. senator from New Hampshire who left the party after Trump won the nomination in 2016 and supported Haley in Tuesday\u2019s primary.<\/p>\n Yet Sean Van Anglen, a New Hampshire political consultant who was an early supporter of Trump in 2016 but voted for Haley this time, is already moving on. Van Anglen, who said he\u2019d consider leaving the presidential line blank on his November ballot rather than vote for Trump or Biden, is looking to put together an effort to aid down-ballot Republicans who he believes could suffer with Trump again at the top of the ticket.<\/p>\n \u201cWe need to let the toddler run his temper tantrum out,\u201d Van Anglen said. \u201cThen let the adults come back into the room and take back control of our party and our country.\u201d<\/p>\n Jessica Piper and Steve Shepard contributed to this report.<\/p>\n