‘Up for grabs’: the Nikki Haley voters who could decide the US election

Jack Merritt, a 74-year-old registered Republican, cast his ballot in Pennsylvania’s presidential primary this spring for Nikki Haley. But there was a catch: she was no longer running for president.

Haley had ended her campaign nearly two months earlier, clearing the way for Donald Trump to become the Republican nominee in this year’s race for the White House.

Merritt, a management consultant who also runs an animal rescue with his wife, said his protest vote made him “feel good”, even if he assumed he was “probably the only guy in the state that did it”.

He was not. More than 150,000 people, or nearly 17 per cent of Republican voters, picked Haley in April’s Pennsylvania primary. In the Philadelphia suburbs, where Merritt lives and swing voters have historically decided close elections in the state, Haley won as much as 25 per cent of the vote.

“It is the strongest evidence that we have had in eight years that while the anti-Trump Republican community is a minority . . . it is still alive and kicking and it wants to be heard,” said Craig Snyder, a Philadelphia consultant who is director of Haley Voters for Biden, a super Pac.

Those swing voters could prove decisive in November, when Pennsylvania will be among the most hotly contested battleground states between Trump, the former president, and the current US president, Joe Biden.

Biden defeated Trump there in 2020 by about 1 per cent, or roughly 80,000 votes — about half of the Haley vote in this year’s primary.

Haley herself has now said she will vote for Trump. But there are no guarantees that her voters — who also turned out in large numbers in Michigan, Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin — will follow suit. Nor is it certain they will get behind Biden, despite his campaign’s best efforts to court them, including by making a “six-figure” digital advertising spree specifically targeting them.

Even though many swing voters are critical of Trump, often citing his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and laundry list of legal troubles, they remain sceptical of Biden, with many questioning his age and mental fitness for office.

“Two-thirds of voters really dislike this choice,” said Charlie Dent, a former Republican congressman from Pennsylvania. “They think that one of the candidates, Joe Biden, is too old, and the other, Donald Trump, is too crazy and erratic. So there are a lot of very disillusioned, or dispirited Republicans, who are looking for something better . . . and they are up for grabs.”

Opinion polls show a presidential contest that is likely to come down to the wire. Despite being convicted on 34 criminal charges by a jury in New York last month, Trump has a narrow lead in most swing state polls, with the latest FiveThirtyEight average in Pennsylvania showing him on 42.7 per cent to Biden’s 41 per cent, within the margin of error.

And while many voters are set in their choices, others are still making up their minds.

Merritt said Trump lacks “moral fortitude”, but added he “really held [his] nose” to vote for Biden in 2020.

“I haven’t decided yet,” Merritt said at his home in West Marlborough Township, referring to the November vote. He “might” write in Haley in the autumn.

Several Haley voters declined to speak to a reporter, or did not want their name to appear in a newspaper. One former Republican official from a neighbouring town in his 40s also floated the idea of writing in Haley in November, in a form of protest vote that could invalidate his ballot. The official wrote in Mitt Romney on his 2016 ballot before voting for Trump in 2020.

He said he would “absolutely” not vote for Trump again in 2024 — but “probably” would not go for Biden, either.

“I think [Trump] is every bit the demagogue that his detractors make him out to be,” the former official said. “I don’t think real well of President Biden. I have family members with dementia. He reminds me of some of [them].”

Cody Bright, 28, from nearby East Goshen, also voted for Haley in the primary but said he would “probably” skip the presidential ballot in November. Bright, an elected Republican on his town’s board of supervisors, voted for Trump in the previous two elections but said the former president’s attempts to overturn the 2020 vote had been a “massive red flag”.

“Unfortunately, [Trump] has fooled enough people,” Bright added. “He fooled me.”

Many Haley voters who spoke to the Financial Times cited Trump’s involvement in January 6 2021 as a watershed moment that prompted them to break with the former president. Most were unsurprised by his recent criminal convictions, and few doubted he was guilty of the crimes.

Marshall Lerner, a 73-year-old retiree who until recently was involved in GOP politics in the area, also voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020, but backed Haley in the primary. He is also undecided about November.

Lerner called the 81-year-old Biden “one of the absolute worst presidents we have ever had” and said he “could never vote” for him. But he added it was “hard . . . to imagine” he would vote for Trump a third time.

“The only vice-president that Trump could select that would get me to vote for him would be Nikki Haley,” Lerner added. “Anyone else doesn’t do it for me.”

It seems unlikely Trump will pick Haley as his running mate — an idea he publicly shot down when it was floated in news articles earlier this year. More recently, Trump’s campaign sent vetting questionnaires to eight potential vice-presidential picks; Haley was not one of them.

Still, it remains unclear how many of Haley’s primary supporters will follow her lead and vote for Trump — and how many will abandon the former president and hurt his chances at the ballot box.

Snyder from Haley Voters for Biden said his “maximum goal” was to get people to support the president. But he said it was “still a win . . . if they write in a candidate or just decide they are going to skip the presidential line . . . any of those actions is a vote that comes out of Donald Trump’s total in the swing states”.

Still, other self-described “anti-Trump” voters are critical of anyone who does not get behind Biden.

“We do not have the luxury of doing some cute little thing like voting third party or writing in some name or even skipping the top of the ticket,” said Ann Womble, 56, a former Republican party activist from Lancaster who became an independent in 2016.

Biden was “not my favourite president”, she said, but she had no real alternative.

“If your anti-Trump sentiment runs deep, then maybe do what I did for the first time ever in 2020: I voted for a Democrat for president,” Womble said. “But you know what? You do it once, it ain’t so bad.”

Have your say

Joe Biden vs Donald Trump: tell us how the 2024 US election will affect you