(LibertySons.org) – Former president Donald Trump is going to be the Republican nominee for this year’s presidential election. A candidate needs 1,215 pledged delegates to secure the position, and with 2,037, Trump is already well past that. A zombie candidate has just done surprisingly well in the Indiana primary, though –- and some are warning this could mean problems for Trump’s campaign.
Warning Signs Emerge From Indiana Primary
The search for this year’s GOP presidential nominee wasn’t a long one. Trump always had the most backing from the party’s grassroots and quickly picked up the delegate numbers to clinch his nomination. Although the race is technically still running, all the other serious candidates dropped out long ago –- the last, former South Carolina governor and US ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, suspended her campaign on March 6. However, states are still voting, and Haley’s name is still on ballot papers even though she’s no longer competing and couldn’t win if she was.
On May 7, Indiana held its Republican presidential primary. This is a solidly red state, and it played a big role in winning Trump the 2016 nomination. However, on Tuesday, Indiana’s voters gave Haley surprisingly strong support. With 589,843 votes counted, it turned out 21.7% of them had backed her — the first time she’s broken 20% since she upped her campaign in March.
Obviously, none of the people who voted for Haley thought their votes were going to somehow win her the nomination, so it looks like a protest vote by anti-Trump Republicans. After all, these are people who took the trouble to vote and made the effort to vote against the candidate who has already won. They’re also most concentrated in urban areas, which swung towards Biden in 2020, and Trump performed relatively badly.
The question for Trump’s campaign is whether Republicans who prefer Haley to him would also prefer Biden to him. It’s possible there’s nothing much to worry about; those Republicans who voted for Haley in the primary might be the same ones who opted for Biden in 2020.
If that’s the case, he can expect to do about as well in Indiana as he did last time round, when he secured all 11 of the state’s electoral votes. On the other hand, it could show that there’s still a big appetite in the GOP for someone who isn’t Donald Trump –- and the danger is that this could translate into Republican voters who don’t come out to support him in November.
~Here’s to Our Liberty!
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