In the final weeks of the campaign season, Kamala Harris has been ramping up her cross-party outreach with an appeal to more moderate Republican and independent voters.
On the campaign trail, the vice president says she is for “all Americans” and has held a series of events in swing states with anti-Trump Republicans, including former GOP Rep. Liz Cheney.
It comes as the presidential race appears very close, with Harris leading by less than half a point nationally according to polling averages.
To win, Harris will also need Republicans to vote for her on November 5.
Earlier this week, Cheney claimed that Harris would receive that support from “millions of silent voters” in the Republican Party who are rejected by Trump.
But are there really hordes of these mysterious Republican voters who lean toward voting Democratic? Experts tell DailyMail.com it’s a little more complex.
Liz Cheney spoke alongside Vice President Kamala Harris in Royal Oak, Michigan, on October 21. He said millions of Republicans will quietly vote for the Democratic presidential candidate in the November election.
‘There are certainly many Republicans who will tell me, “I can’t speak in public.” “They worry about a wide range of things related to violence, but they will do the right thing,” Cheney said Monday in Oakland County, Michigan.
He stated that there are “millions of Republicans” who are “concerned” and will “vote their conscience” on November 5.
Republican strategist Kevin Madden believes the idea of ”hidden” voters is unfounded at this point, as both campaigns have spent billions identifying voters and what motivates them.
‘Both campaigns know where they are and what they must do to mobilize them. The elections are the test of their capacity,” he said.
“Harris is in a difficult position because, like his first campaign in 2019, he enjoyed a brief surge of attention but then failed to close the deal with voters,” he continued.
But others have been spending millions and a lot of time trying to reach out to potential Republican vice presidents. They believe they are ‘millions’ estimate is not unfounded.
One group to keep in mind when it comes to Republicans willing to vote for the Democrat is those who voted for Nikki Haley in the Republican presidential primary.
In the seven battleground states alone, nearly a million people voted for the former South Carolina governor in the 2024 primary.
While large numbers are expected to return to the fold and vote for Trump in the general election, whom she endorsed, there remain those who are done with the MAGA wing of the party.
Robert Schwartz is the Michigan director of Haley Voters for Harris.
“According to people who respond to polls, a third, you know a third of these Haley voters, at least, and probably another five or 10 percent are going to vote for Kamala Harris,” Schwartz said.
“There will certainly be a million, more than, probably closer to 2 million people who voted in the Republican primary for Nikki Haley across the country who will vote for Kamala Harris this year,” he said.
His group has been testing digital ads aimed at center-right voters. He found that messages about democracy were not moving the needle, but economic messages were.
They are now targeting Haley’s Republican voters and about 300,000 others with the ads in an effort to change their minds.
Voters participating in early voting in the 2024 election in Greensboro, North Carolina. More than 33 million people have already cast their votes in the election, including early voting and voting by mail.
In North Carolina, Haley Voters for Harris state director Michael Tucker, who previously served on the board of the Mecklenburg County Republican Party, argued that they don’t even need “millions” or Republicans when Trump only won the state by less than 75,000 votes. .
He said the goal has been to give Republicans the “permission structure” to vote for a Democrat without being one because the current Republican Party does not represent the values of Ronald Reagan and John McCain.
While some of the Republican voters who plan to vote for a Democrat also backed Biden in 2020, he found that there are more registered Republicans who will join the group in 2024, when they reached a tipping point with Trump’s rhetoric.
“It’s not a great party anymore,” Tucker said of the Republican Party after Trump rejected Haley’s voter support in the primary.
“There is no place in the extreme MAGA GOP party,” he said.
“People are going through a bit of an identity crisis,” he added of Republicans who disagree with MAGA.
Tucker said there has also been a silent element.
When you knock on doors, you find divided homes, with husbands and wives voting for different candidates and focusing on different issues.
“Reproductive rights have struck a chord,” she said, noting that’s part of what’s behind the large gender gap.
Former Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley endorsed Trump months after withdrawing from the Republican primary. She has been vocal in her criticism of Harris and Biden, but when asked if he would take her to campaign with him, Trump highlighted how badly he beat Haley in the primary instead of asking her to appear with him on the campaign trail.
As for Haley herself, she has endorsed Trump. But the former president did not want to see her in the election campaign for him. When asked about it recently, she mentioned that she had lost badly to him in the primaries.
John Conway of Republican Voters Against Trump agrees with Cheney’s assessment, noting that Trump has been alienating people since 2016.
“There will be a cascade of Republican voters who will reject Trump at the polls,” Conway said.
He has been working on Republican voter focus groups where they talk to two-time Trump voters who won’t vote for the former president a third time. The number one reason why they break up with him is the attack of January 6.
Some were reluctant to vote for him in 2020, but the insurrection was the final nail. Since then, some have shared that Trump became more extreme in talking about the “enemy within” and became a convicted felon.
Conway said most Republicans will support Trump and many will do so enthusiastically, but he is looking at the margins he believes will decide the election.
Republican Voters Against Trump has also been holding focus groups with so-called ‘flippers’ who voted for Trump once and Biden once. He said several of them were backing away from the Trump-Biden debate in June, but when Harris took over the nomination, she was able to reconsolidate some of those voters.
Those who voted for Biden but are voting again for Trump have shared that their biggest issue is the economy, followed by immigration.
Conway said that while the Republican coalition will have changed in 2024 from the past, the vast majority who have turned away from Trump are still committed to Harris.
Where the vice president has also been vulnerable is being an undefined candidate with such a short campaign, but Conway believes she has been able to successfully present herself to these voters.
What remains to be seen is who actually goes to the polls and who stays home on Election Day, but more and more Republicans continue to speak out.
Retired Michigan Congressman Fred Upton is one of the latest Republicans to publicly endorse Vice President Kamala Harris.
Former Michigan Republican Congressman Fred Upton, who served 36 years in the House, was one of the last Republicans to endorse Harris this week.
Waukesha, Wisconsin, Mayor Shawn Reilly, who represents a deep Republican stronghold, is also among those speaking publicly about voting for Harris. He left the Republican Party after the January 6 attack on the US Capitol in 2021.
Reilly previously voted for a third party in 2016 and for Biden in 2020, but kept it to himself.
“I feel in my heart that this is something I need to come out and say,” he told a local television station. He said his vote this year is against Trump.