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up today at ixl.com/NPR. Hi,

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this is Emily from Omaha, Nebraska.

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I am currently walking with my four-month-old

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daughter Cora to pick up

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her big brother Henry from his last

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day of kindergarten. This

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podcast was recorded at 12 36 p.m. Eastern Time on Monday,

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June 10th of 2024. Things

0:38

may change by the time you hear it. Okay,

0:40

here's the show. I'm

0:46

so nostalgic when I hear these stories of

0:48

little babies. Yeah, they get big real fast.

0:50

It is that time of year, though, with

0:53

my daughter just going to middle school and

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my son starting high school. So... Wait,

0:57

your son is starting high school to Minico? That's

0:59

a time warp. Wow. Yeah, well, I had him

1:01

in eighth grade myself, so... Well,

1:05

hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm

1:07

Asma Khaled. I cover the White House. I'm

1:10

Sarah McCammon. I cover the campaign. And

1:12

I'm Domenico Muntzner, our senior political editor and correspondent.

1:15

And today on the show, we're going

1:17

to explore what Nikki Haley voters are

1:19

thinking now about the presidential election. Will

1:21

they stick with Trump? Will they break

1:23

for Biden? Or will they just stay

1:25

home? And Sarah, you have

1:27

been speaking specifically to these kinds of

1:29

voters. So tell us what you've heard.

1:31

Right. So Haley voters have gotten a

1:33

lot of attention, mostly because they appear

1:35

to be a potential swing voter group

1:37

to some extent. A lot of

1:39

these voters told us on the campaign trail that

1:42

they really didn't like their choices if it was

1:44

between former President Trump and

1:46

President Biden. And even after

1:48

Haley dropped out, you probably remember she dropped

1:50

out in early March, but she kept getting

1:52

double digits in some Republican primaries where she

1:55

was still on the ballot. So that kind

1:57

of signaled an appetite for something else. So

2:00

in a close election like this one appears

2:02

to be, these votes could really matter. And

2:04

both campaigns are interested in them, as are

2:06

we. So I tracked

2:09

down several voters that we had met along

2:11

the way during the primary. And bottom line,

2:13

a lot of them still tell me they're

2:15

not thrilled with their choices. Some

2:18

are still making up their minds, but most seem

2:20

to at least be leaning one way or the

2:22

other. Of course, these are anecdotal conversations I had

2:24

with about a half a dozen voters

2:27

who voted or were planning to vote

2:29

in Republican primaries. And I

2:31

can tell you, bottom line, Asma, most of

2:33

them seem to be leaning toward Trump, but

2:35

not all, and some are still trying to

2:37

decide. Sarah, in these anecdotal conversations, is there

2:39

anybody who has stuck with you or that

2:41

you just think is kind of emblematic of

2:44

a bigger theme? Yeah, it was kind of fun to

2:46

go back and listen to what people said during the

2:48

primary and what they're saying now. So one

2:51

of those people was Emily Roberson.

2:53

She's from North Carolina. And

2:56

earlier this year, she actually talked to our

2:58

colleague, Elena Moore, about why she

3:00

hoped Haley would be the Republican nominee. I

3:03

just think she represents best

3:05

what a lot of us are feeling, kind

3:07

of left out of both sides of

3:10

the equation. Whether you are

3:12

more liberal or more conservative, I just think

3:14

she speaks to the missing middle. And that

3:16

was really in line with what I had

3:18

also heard from a lot of Haley voters

3:20

during the campaign. So I called

3:22

Roberson up not long ago and asked

3:24

her, OK, where are you at? And

3:27

here's what she had to say. Neither excite me.

3:29

If I vote for one over the

3:31

other, it's not a vote for them. It

3:34

would be against the other. And

3:36

that's a terrible place to be. So she

3:38

had voted for Trump before in the

3:40

past two general elections. She really didn't

3:42

want to again. She thinks he's too

3:44

divisive. She said she's tired of what

3:46

she describes as his antics. But she's

3:48

also unhappy with President Biden's job performance

3:50

on several issues, including the

3:52

economy and immigration. And

3:54

she told me she really hasn't totally decided.

3:56

She might abstain. She might write someone in.

3:59

But she did. She did say that if Trump were to

4:01

pick Nikki Haley as his VP, she'd be

4:03

more inclined to vote for Trump, although she

4:06

acknowledged that doesn't appear likely. I'm

4:08

curious what you hear are their

4:11

main issues or policy priorities. Again,

4:14

inflation, the economy, the border,

4:16

immigration, those are big ones.

4:20

Just last week, the Biden campaign

4:22

hired a full-time staffer to focus

4:24

on Republican engagement, reaching out to

4:26

former Haley voters and other Republicans

4:28

who might be persuadable. His name

4:30

is Austin Weatherford, and he's a former

4:32

chief of staff to former Republican Congressman

4:34

Adam Kinzinger, who of course was a

4:37

high-profile critic of former President Trump. I

4:40

talked to Weatherford last week, and one of

4:42

the things he said he would be focusing

4:44

on is issues like reproductive rights as

4:47

well as foreign policy. I do

4:49

think, though, for these Haley voters, it

4:51

is about policy quite a bit, actually.

4:53

I think, you know, foreign policy in

4:55

particular and character as well is a

4:57

big thing. But you know, it's

4:59

harder for Biden to try to

5:01

win them over because they also

5:04

just don't align with him on

5:06

a lot of other things, not just

5:08

how the United States is perceived around

5:11

the world. It may not

5:13

likely be enough to win them over, and

5:15

frankly, they're not even that big of a

5:17

universe of voters. How big of a universe are they?

5:20

Well, what we found in our survey when

5:22

we asked trying to drill down on where

5:24

Haley voters would go was that only about

5:27

14% of the

5:29

Republicans and Republican-leaning independents who we surveyed

5:31

in the entire poll said that they

5:33

would still vote for Nikki Haley over

5:35

Donald Trump. Trump wins something like 90% of

5:39

Republicans or more in our survey, and

5:41

that universe is so small, the 14%, that

5:43

that margin of error is way too high

5:45

to even draw a lot of conclusions about

5:48

them. And roughly, though, they broke

5:50

60-40 for Trump still.

5:53

So you know, it's a small-ish group,

5:55

but when you have what the Biden

5:58

campaign is expecting to be, different

6:00

election, a lower turnout election, a different

6:02

kind of coalition they need. They're looking

6:05

for any advantage they can get in

6:07

growth areas when they're likely

6:09

to lose voters who were

6:11

with them in 2020. I

6:13

think it's about both personality and policy.

6:15

And what I mean by that is

6:18

when I talk to a lot of these Haley voters,

6:21

you know, almost to a person, they don't like

6:23

Trump's personality, even if they voted for him before,

6:25

they just would rather that was not the temperament

6:27

of the person that they vote for this time.

6:30

You know, Dave Wardlaw was someone that

6:33

our colleague Jung Yun Han met earlier

6:35

this year in South Carolina. He's from

6:37

Georgia. But he at that point was

6:39

not happy about that statement Trump had

6:41

made that you may remember. He said,

6:43

anybody who supports Nikki Haley's campaign

6:46

will be permanently barred from

6:48

MAGA. So Wardlaw told Jung

6:50

Yun that he had actually donated to

6:52

Haley's campaign in response to that. I'm

6:54

going to vote for Trump, even though he barred me.

6:56

I'm going to vote for him. You know, he

6:59

said that's just how Trump is. And he's come around to

7:01

deciding to support Trump because fundamentally he's a

7:03

Republican and he agrees with Trump on policy.

7:05

On that note, folks, let's take a quick

7:08

break and we'll be back in a moment.

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