Haley wins bigger against Biden overall than Trump or DeSantis does
Tiana Lowe Doescher
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The major takeaway from CNN’s latest polling to send shockwaves through the commentariat was the conclusion that in a head-to-head matchup against President Joe Biden, Nikki Haley would win with the widest margin of any Republican jockeying for the party’s nomination. But buried in the data are even more potentially momentous findings, namely that the former ambassador to the United Nations also wins the greatest margin of white voters.
Overall, Haley has pretty decisively usurped the electability argument from Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL). Whereas CNN found Haley garners 49% support in a general to Biden’s 43%, the Florida governor is stuck in a 47%-47% deadlock against the Democrat. Former President Donald Trump, still the dominant front-runner in the primary, only fares slightly better, with his 47% support barely beating Biden’s 46%.
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The betting markets still give Trump about a two-thirds shot of winning the primary, and any non-Trump candidate’s chance of beating the former president hinges entirely on eking out upsets in the early states, not any national polling. But the implications of Haley’s demographic support mean much when it comes to whittling down the field swiftly and decisively.
In a general contest against Biden, Haley and the incumbent win respectively 57% and 35% of the white vote. Compare that to Trump, who wins 53% of the white vote to Biden’s 41%, and DeSantis, who wins 56% of the white vote to Biden’s 40%. Why is that? Because Haley is the only candidate that CNN found wins a majority of white college graduates. (As an aside: Trump still wins the widest margins among nonwhite voters, but Haley performs much better than DeSantis.)
Back in 2016, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) was loudly scoffed at for claiming that Hillary Clinton could recoup her losses among blue-collar Rust Belt voters with disproportionate gains among centrist suburbanites. While the calculus obviously failed thanks to Clinton’s historic unpopularity, the (other) New York senator’s premonition proved somewhat prophetic: 2018’s “blue wave” indeed resulted from low turnout of red-leaning blue-collar Rust Belters and high turnout among those purple-turned-periwinkle suburbs. In 2020, the newly Democratic lean of the suburbs cemented Biden’s overall victory, and on a state level, Biden became the first Democrat since the elder Clinton to win Georgia, in part because of an increase in white college graduates who skewed Democratic.
Oh, and among non-college-educated white voters, Haley, DeSantis, and Trump are running a 34-point, 34-point, and 33-point margin respectively against Biden. Yes, that means Haley and DeSantis marginally overperform with Trump’s supposed base.
Unlike Trump or DeSantis, Haley hasn’t been in the spotlight much since before the first debate, and it’s possible that as new opposition attacks her rising star, her favor falls among voters. But as a snapshot in time, the latest CNN poll indeed proves that Haley has the strongest claim to electability, and it’s the non-white woman in the race who’s winning the greatest share of whites.