When Nikki Haley decided to suspend her presidential campaign, she made it clear that she would not be endorsing Donald Trump, who was the only major candidate left for the 2024 Republican nomination. Interestingly, it seems that some of her supporters in Pennsylvania shared the same sentiment.
In Pennsylvania’s primary vote on Tuesday, Haley garnered nearly 17% of the vote, which translates to 1 in 6 votes. It’s worth noting that she had not actively campaigned for the presidency since she withdrew from the race in early March. Trump, on the other hand, secured the majority of the vote with 83%.
If Haley GOP voters in Pennsylvania refuse to support Trump in November, it could seriously harm his chances of winning the state’s 19 electoral votes and potentially impact his chances of re-election. Pennsylvania is a crucial battleground state in the presidential election.
Haley never had a large enough base to pose a serious challenge to Trump before he secured his third consecutive Republican presidential nomination.
In Pennsylvania’s primary, the former U.N. ambassador and South Carolina governor, Nikki Haley, received over 156,000 votes. This is roughly twice the margin by which Joe Biden defeated Trump in Pennsylvania during the 2020 election, which was 80,500 votes. In 2016, Trump won Pennsylvania by a narrower margin of 44,000 votes against Hillary Clinton.
Haley received a higher percentage of votes from urban and suburban areas, where Trump faced significant defeats in his previous two presidential campaigns.
U.S. Rep. Dean Phillips of Minnesota emerged as a strong contender on the Democratic side, garnering approximately 7% of the vote, which translates to nearly 70,000 votes as of Wednesday morning. Furthermore, counties had reported nearly 60,000 votes for write-in candidates. Although a few counties were yet to disclose their write-in totals, the specific breakdown of write-in votes for the “uncommitted” category was not immediately accessible.
Phillips and Haley had qualified for Pennsylvania’s primary ballot but withdrew from the presidential race. As for Biden and Trump, they are currently on the path to securing their parties’ presidential nominations and will ultimately compete against each other in the upcoming general election in November. It’s worth noting that Phillips has given his endorsement to Biden.
In Pennsylvania’s GOP and Democratic presidential primaries, approximately 1 million ballots have been counted each. These numbers are significant considering the total of 3.5 million registered Republican voters and 3.9 million registered Democratic voters in the state.
In Pennsylvania, primary elections are held as closed elections, which implies that individuals must have been registered as either a Republican or Democrat by April 8 in order to participate in the primary for their chosen party.
