Donald Trump faced warning signs in Indiana on Tuesday when more than 128,000 Republican primary voters opted to vote for another candidate despite being the presumptive Republican presidential nominee and having no opponents in the race.
Trump received more than 78.3 percent of the vote in Tuesday’s red state primary, more than 461,000 voters.
But more than 128,000 voters, 21 percent, voted for Nikki Haley, the only Republican presidential candidate to drop out of the race more than two months ago after Super Tuesday.
Despite having a strong grip on the majority of the Republican Party, Tuesday’s results indicate trouble for the former Republican president as he seeks to shore up GOP support and broaden his base for the November general election.
Indiana held its open Republican presidential primary on Tuesday, where Haley received a sizable number of votes despite dropping out of the race two months ago.
Indiana is a red state that voted overwhelmingly for Trump in 2020 with 57 percent of the vote against Joe Biden. The former president even expanded his support in the state starting in 2016.
In the last twenty-one presidential elections, Democrats have only won the state twice: Lyndon Johnson in 1964 and Barack Obama in 2008.
But Tuesday’s results are just the latest in a series of primaries in which several voters who voted Republican have chosen not to fall in line since Trump won the necessary number of delegates.
“Nikki retired two months ago and is still getting a sizable share of the primary vote,” said a former Haley staffer. “You’d have to be an idiot not to understand that Trump needs Haley’s Republicans to win in November.”
Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee and has turned his attention to the general election, but Haley continues to receive votes in the Republican primaries, while Trump should shore up the party’s base.
Just two weeks ago, Haley received more than 155,000 voters in the Pennsylvania Republican primary, a significant number in a battleground state that Biden won by fewer than 100,000 voters in 2020.
Haley earned more than half a million votes combined in the March 19 primaries, including those in Florida, Ohio and Arizona, weeks after she dropped out of the race.
While the former president was able to secure the nomination much earlier this year than has been seen in previous non-incumbent primaries, Haley has not filed to endorse her former boss and political opponent.
In response to Indiana’s results, a Trump campaign official noted that the state has an open primary, meaning any registered voter can participate in any of the party’s primaries, and Democrats had few competitive races.
Haley received a significant number of his votes in Indianapolis and the surrounding suburbs.
Nikki Haley received more than half a million votes in the March 19 primary despite dropping out of the race the day after Super Tuesday. On Tuesday she received 128,000 votes in Indiana’s Republican presidential primary.
The Trump campaign official argued that Democrats in previous races were more than happy to vote for Haley and, in fact, were encouraged to do so through funded campaigns.
The Trump campaign, which weeks ago secured the necessary delegates for Trump to be the nominee, has not spent any money or resources on the primary campaign.
They said they would win Indiana and the White House in November.
But Biden’s campaign has been working hard to woo Haley voters to support the president in November.
President Joe Biden’s campaign has been actively courting Nikki Haley voters for the general election.
President Biden has openly invited Haley voters to join the fold. The campaign even ran an ad directly appealing to Haley voters to support Biden and reject Trump in late March. It primarily targeted those in suburban battleground areas where Haley had her way in the primaries against Trump.
Trump, meanwhile, has been stuck in a New York courtroom for most of the past three weeks with limited campaign stops in battleground states as he faces criminal charges for falsifying business records in the hush money case.
When not in court, the former president has focused much of his campaign efforts on battleground states.
Last week he stopped in Michigan and Wisconsin. This weekend he heads to Wildwood, New Jersey, for a campaign rally.
As for Haley, it was announced last month that she would be joining the conservative Hudson Institute, her first big move since dropping out of the primary on March 6.
