Trump is facing another major hidden problem

Donald Trump might be performing well in general polling but there are signs the former president might be in for a difficult battle on election day. Pennsylvania could be just one example of the hidden hurdles Trump will face in November.

Why Pennsylvania has become a potential problem for Trump has to do with the results of the state's recent Republican presidential primary. The former president won the race handily but Nikki Haley didn’t perform all that terribly either. 

Haley was able to capture 158,106 votes to Trump’s 792,408, which represented about 16.6% of the vote according to the New York Times. These results were intriguing since Haley dropped out of the primary race back on March 6th. 

“The time has now come to suspend my campaign,” Haley told a crowd of supporters in Charleston according to the Guardian. “It is now up to Donald Trump to earn the votes of those in our party and beyond who did not support him and I hope he does that.”

Trump later went on to win enough delegates to surpass the 1,225 delegates he needed to become the presumptive Republican presidential nominee on March 12th. However, since then questions have turned toward the former president’s electability.

The Daily Beast’s Dan Ladden-Hall noted that Pennsylvania's primary showed that over 150,000 Republican registered voters chose to support a defunct campaign instead of Trump” in a state where he beat Hillary Clinton by just 45,000 votes in 2016. 

In 2020, Trump lost Pennsylvania to Biden by just over 80,000 votes according to the Philadelphia Inquirer, which noted at the time that the loss was “a story of the suburbs,” which delivered for Biden in “overwhelming fashion”.

Whether or not Trump can beat Biden in November is a key question for all sides of the political aisle but awkward performances like Trump’s win in Pennsylvania have shown that not all Republicans are aligned behind the former president. 

Trump may have won 83.5% of the primary vote in Pennsylvania but he still had 16.6% of Republican primary voters come out against him. Whether or not those voters can be won back by the former president is still unknown. But he will need them to win in 2024. 

Newsweek’s Ewan Palmer noted that Pennsylvania is one of the states that could “ultimately decide who wins the 2024 election.” Palmer’s assessment was spot on since Pennsylvania is one of the seven key swing states in 2024.

“This is a huge red flag for the Trump campaign in a battleground state. Many Republicans will never vote for Donald Trump,” wrote the anti-Trump group Republicans Against Trump on X following the former president’s performance against Haley in Pennsylvania. 

Democratic strategist Matt McDermott added to the conversation online by reporting the biggest takeaway from Pennsylvania’s primary was that Trump had lost a lot of votes in the state’s suburbs, writing that the losses were “major red flags for Republicans.”

On April 4th, Franklin & Marshall College Poll found Biden enjoyed 48% support among the voters pollsters surveyed compared to Trump’s 38% support. That meant Biden had a 10-point lead over the former president. However, not all polls favor Biden. 

As of April 29th, Five ThirtyEight’s latest polling averages actually had Trump ahead of Biden in Pennsylvania by a slim 1.6% margin with Trump winning the state at 48.3% compared to Biden’s 41.9%. At present, the race may just be too close to call. 

However, the 16.6% of Pennsylvania Republicans who voted for Nikki Haley in the state primary on April 23rd may still be a major unknown factor that influences whether Biden or Trump takes the state come November. 

“The result is part of a pattern that has played out across the primary season, with Trump winning by large margins but facing potentially concerning protest votes,” Dan Ladden-Hall explained. 

Haley took over ten percent in several other primaries including Wisconsin, Rhode Island, New York, and Connecticut, Ladden-Hall continued, but added it was not yet clear of those voters who choose Trump or Biden in the general election.