HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) – When Nikki Haley suspended her presidential campaign, she refused to endorse Donald Trump as the last remaining major candidate for the 2024 Republican nomination — and apparently some of her supporters in Pennsylvania too.
Haley won nearly 17% of the vote in Pennsylvania’s primary Tuesday, or 1 in 6 votes, to Trump’s 83%, although she has not campaigned for president since. she ended her offer early March.
Pennsylvania’s 19 electoral votes up for grabs make it a leading battleground state. So if Haley’s Republican voters refuse to support Trump in November, it could deal a damaging blow to his chances of winning the state and, potentially, re-election.
Haley’s base was never big enough to seriously challenge Trump before he clinched a third straight Republican presidential nomination.
But with nearly all the ballots counted in the Pennsylvania primary, the former U.N. ambassador and South Carolina governor totaled more than 156,000 votes, roughly double the Democrat’s 80,500-vote margin. . Joe Biden defeated Trump in Pennsylvania in 2020. Pennsylvania’s election was even closer in 2016, when Trump beat Democrat Hillary Clinton by 44,000 votes.
A larger share of votes for Haley generally came from urban and suburban areas where Trump suffered massive losses in his previous two presidential campaigns.
On the Democratic side, U.S. Rep. Dean Phillips of Minnesota won 7% against Biden, or nearly 70,000 votes as of Wednesday morning. Counties had reported nearly 60,000 for registered candidates. A handful of counties had not yet reported write-in vote totals, and the breakdown of write-in votes for “uncommitted” was not immediately available.
Phillips and Haley qualified for the Pennsylvania primary ballot before dropping out of the presidential race, and Biden and Trump are on track to win their parties’ presidential nominations and face each other in the November general election. Phillips endorsed Biden.
In total, about 1 million ballots were counted each in Tuesday’s Republican and Democratic presidential primaries in Pennsylvania, out of 3.5 million registered Republican voters and 3.9 million registered Democratic voters.
Pennsylvania holds closed primary elections, meaning a person must have been registered as a Republican or Democrat by April 8 to have voted in the primary for that party.
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AP Public Opinion Research Director Emily Swanson contributed to this report. Follow Marc Lévy on twitter.com/timelywriter.
