The Spire

Ashwin Prabaharan ’26

Chief Opinions Editor

The Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primaries held in January of this year proved immensely rewarding towards former President Donald Trump’s bid for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination. In Iowa, President Trump swept 98 of the 99 voting precincts, garnering 51% of votes tallied. In New Hampshire, the former president netted an impressive majority of 53% of votes cast, the highest percentage ever collected by a non-incumbent candidate running in the primary. With these two primary victories under his belt, President Trump is being widely hailed as the party’s presumptive nominee and pundits have set up the general election to be a rematch between the former president and incumbent Democratic President Joe Biden.

It is officially inevitable that the GOP will find itself nominating President Trump for the presidency to seek President Biden’s ouster this November. No candidate for the Republican presidential nomination that scored victories in Iowa and New Hampshire has gone on not to be the nominee. In addition, electoral polls from a slew of outlets suggest the next several primaries will result in landslide victories for President Trump against his competitors, chiefly former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, who just so happened to be his Ambassador to the United Nations. FiveThirtyEight’s latest poll in the upcoming Nevada Republican primary has President Trump capturing 73% of party voters, while in South Carolina he takes 58% of the primary’s votes. Winning the two primaries would effectively cement his status as the party’s nominee, after which it is widely expected that his chief rival Governor Haley would drop out of the race. The presumptive nominee then becomes THE nominee, setting the stage for a rematch race that sees incredibly high feelings of voter apathy. Decision Desk HQ and NewsNation released a poll on the 15th showing nearly 59% of voters are “unenthusiastic of a rematch” between the two incumbent nominees. President Biden is easily expected to coast to victory in the Democratic primaries being held and will accept the nomination at the Democratic National Convention this summer in Chicago. The national party apparatus has canceled and moved several primaries, notably New Hampshire, in a bid to consolidate the party base’ support for President Biden. He faces no real opposition to the nomination, and has already begun centering his campaign strategy on President Trump’s candidacy.

The real question any Republican voter would want to ask is: Is President Trump the right or best candidate to send into November to capture the White House for the party? The answer is an emphatic no. Though he won a crushing victory in Iowa and New Hampshire, and is expected to win accordingly in successive primaries, President Trump has only proven his ability to excite his enthusiastic but small and shrinking base. He has managed to successfully alienate a great number of independents and turn off moderate voters tuned into the election cycle. In New Hampshire for example, still a battleground state, second-place winner Nikki Haley won independent voters 58% to Trump’s 39%. New Hampshire has voted consistently for the Democratic presidential candidate for the last several election cycles, albeit by considerably small margins. For any Republican candidate to attempt to put the state in play for the general election, they must be able to court a significant number of independent voters along with the traditional base of Republican voters. The base alone will prove insufficient for any GOP candidate, and given New Hampshire’s unique landscape of electing moderate Republicans to statewide office while often giving the state’s four electoral votes to the Democratic candidate, independents and unaffiliated voters effectively get to decide the state’s path towards either camp. Nikki Haley proved her electability argument thoroughly with her candidacy in New Hampshire, courting both traditional Republicans while expanding the tent to successfully manage in bringing in those crucial independent and unaffiliated voters.

 President Trump performed best with non-college-educated voters and those answering yes to belonging squarely in the “MAGA” camp. These sets of voters are not enough to win any general election where nearly a third of registered voters are independents or not affiliated with either party. If New Hampshire spelled anything for the Republican Party other than President Trump’s inevitable status as the party’s nominee, it spoke to his difficult path in managing to court voters outside of the “MAGA” movement, the very voters who delivered his defeat in close swing states including Georgia and Arizona. National polls show Nikki Haley on average defeating President Biden by 7 points, while President Trump captures the White House by 2 points, well within the margin of error. A surprising poll by UVA shows Haley defeating President Biden by five points in Virginia, a state that has not been in play since the early parts of this century. 

If the Republican apparatus were truly committed to capturing the White House and realizing GOP policy objectives for the American people, it would not begin distancing itself from President Trump’s candidacy, but would throw every resource it has behind Nikki Haley’s efforts and set her up for November. Polls may suggest that President Biden is set to lose control of his office, but his electoral strength, in my opinion, is being underestimated heavily and he will outperform expectations against President Trump come the general. The Republican Party simply cannot afford another cycle of electoral disappointments at the behest of the MAGA movement, it is time to move on to proven, electable campaign strategies.