Donald Trump Has a GOP Base Problem

Donald Trump's dominance in the 2024 Republican primaries is still being hampered by ongoing and potentially significant support received by Nikki Haley.

On Tuesday, the former president and presumptive 2024 Republican candidate continued his successful primary season with a comfortable victory in Indiana, winning more than 78 percent of the vote.

Haley, however, Trump's last remaining Republican rival who dropped out of the race in March, still managed to gain 21.7 percent of the vote, amounting to more than 128,000 votes. It's the latest sign that a sizable portion of the GOP base still does not want to support the MAGA former president.

When broken down further, the Indiana Republican primary results showed that the former United Nations ambassador received more than 30 percent of the vote in several areas, including Marion Country, where the state capital, Indianapolis, is located, and the affluent suburb of Hamilton Country.

While discussing the results Ammar Moussa, a spokesperson for President Joe Biden's 2024 campaign team, posted on X, formerly Twitter: "Nikki Haley dropped out 2 months ago. Tonight she's picking up over 100,000 votes and 22% of the primary vote in *Indiana.* Trump has a GOP base problem."

Newsweek reached out to Trump's office via email for comment.

The results in Indiana were not an outlier for Haley. The former South Carolina governor, who was seen by many as a more moderate Republican candidate, managed to achieve between 20 and 40 percent of the votes in several states on Super Tuesday—including Massachusetts (37 percent), Colorado (34 percent) and Minnesota (29 percent)—on her way to winning more than two million votes.

Even after she dropped out of the race, Haley still received 16.6 percent of the vote in the key swing state of Pennsylvania on April 23, being selected on more than 158,000 ballots.

The results in the Keystone State were notable because the general election results in Pennsylvania in November could help determine who controls the White House.

In 2020, Trump lost the swing state to Biden by just over 1 percent, or 80,555 votes. Haley achieved nearly double the votes in the GOP primary than the amount Trump lost by in 2020. That could make it difficult for the former president in the state with no guarantee that Haley's supporters will go on to support Trump in the 2024 general election.

Christopher Borick, a professor of political science and director of the Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion in Pennsylvania, told Newsweek: "Nikki Haley's significant share of the vote in the GOP primary in Pennsylvania is an absolute warning sign for Trump."

"Her 16 percent share of the vote is quite a signal for the Trump campaign that they have work to do in shoring up the Republican base in a crucial battleground," he said.

Borick added that Haley performed best in the suburbs among highly educated and wealthier Republicans who maintain "significant reservations" about Trump.

"In 2020, those Philadelphia suburbs played a pivotal role in propelling Biden to a fairly narrow victory, and the results in the primary indicate a challenging landscape for Trump to navigate this year," he said.

"To be sure, the primary results show Biden with his own struggles maintaining his 2020 coalition, but Trump's weak spots seem to have been highlighted to a greater degree."

In an interview with Lancaster news station WGAL, Trump downplayed the significance of Haley still getting 16 percent of the vote in Pennsylvania as it is a "very small number" that he will sweep up come November.

"All of those people are going to come to me because, first of all, what's their choice? Biden? He's the worst president in the history of our country," Trump said.

"There's never been a president so bad. He's incompetent. So they're all coming to me. We see it already, they're all coming to me."

The GOP primaries continue with elections in Maryland, Nebraska, and West Virginia on May 14. Trump will likely be confirmed as the GOP's 2024 nominee at the Republican National Convention in July.