Nikki Haley, generic Republican
Timothy P. Carney
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Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley sure looks like former President Donald Trump’s top challenger for the Republican presidential nomination, judging by the tone of Wednesday night’s debate, in which the former governor and ambassador was the chief target of the other candidates.
One of her strongest claims to be the GOP nominee is the string of polls showing she would fare better against President Joe Biden than would Trump or the other top GOP challenger, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL).
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In Wisconsin, for instance, Haley beats Biden by 9 points in the latest poll, DeSantis barely edges out Biden, and Trump polls slightly behind Biden.
Nationwide, Haley consistently beats Biden in head-to-head polls — the same polls in which Trump loses to Biden. In CNN’s most recent poll, for instance, Haley beats Biden by 6 points, Trump beats Biden by 4 points, and DeSantis beats Biden by only 2.
For a Republican voter who mostly wants to oust Biden and ensure a Republican president, this would seem to make Haley the obvious pick. And there is reason to believe Haley really is the strongest general election candidate Republicans could field.
Democrats rely heavily on calling their opponents racist and sexist, which is a much harder sell against an Indian American woman. Haley has shown strength among the largest swing demographic, which is upper-middle-class suburban voters. Her debate performances have also shown her to be an adept politician.
But there’s reason to believe she’s not as strong of a general election candidate as the recent polls show. Specifically, she may be polling as well as she is because she is relatively unknown.
In that Marquette poll, Haley easily had the lowest unfavorables, but she also had by far the highest “I don’t knows.” A full one-third of all voters said they didn’t know enough about her to have a strong opinion (compare that to 13% who don’t know enough about DeSantis and basically nobody who doesn’t know enough about Trump or Biden). Mathematically, that means a large number of Wisconsin voters said they would vote for her over Biden while admitting they didn’t know her enough to form an opinion on her.
That’s called soft support.
The CNN nationwide poll shows the same sort of thing: 33% of respondents say they have never heard of Haley, and 19% say they have no opinion. That leaves less than 50% who have any opinion of her at all.
Check out this chart:
It shows you Haley generally outperforming Trump, consistently outperforming DeSantis, and universally underperforming “Generic Republican.”
Generic Republican is the strongest opponent Biden could face because Generic Republican has no negatives. Haley is the closest thing to a flesh-and-blood Generic Republican, and that’s why she’s polling well.
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Once she’s more well known, her negatives will go up, and her advantage against Biden will shrink.
Again, Haley may actually be the strongest candidate against Biden. But as of now, some of her strong polling is that she is relatively unknown.