Analysis: BU Experts on Presidential Politics after N.H. Primary
What’s next for Trump, Haley, Biden—and Democracy
Donald Trump’s supporters propelled him to about a 10-point victory over Nikki Haley in Tuesday’s New Hampshire Republican presidential primary. Here, Trump speaks at an election night party in Nashua, N.H., as Vivek Ramaswamy (from left), Senator Tim Scott (R-S.C.), and Eric Trump watch. AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais
Analysis: BU Experts on Presidential Politics after N.H. Primary
What’s next for Trump, Haley, Biden—and democracy?
Donald Trump won Tuesday’s New Hampshire Republican presidential primary by more than 10 points over Nikki Haley (54.5 to 43.2 percent) and will now sweep his way easily to the nomination.
Or not.
The first scenario seemed to be the general consensus of media pundits, but some noted that Trump only attracted about half of GOP voters in the N.H. primary and Iowa caucus, raising questions about how he would fare in the general election. And Haley has vowed to fight on. The next Republican primary is in her home state, South Carolina, but Trump is favored there, too.
(President Biden, meanwhile, handily won the Democratic race in New Hampshire, even though voters had to write his name in.)
We asked a handful of BU experts to help us sort out the results from a variety of perspectives.
Q&A
with Tammy Vigil, Christine Slaughter, Bruce Schulman, Paul Hare, Shawn M. Lynch, and Rachel Meade
BU Today: What do the Republican primary results mean for Trump and Haley?
Tammy Vigil, associate professor of media science and senior associate dean, College of Communication:
Despite the win in New Hampshire, the results actually illustrate weaknesses in Trump’s candidacy. The likelihood Trump will secure the Republican nomination remains high, but Tuesday’s outcome revealed distinct fissures within the Republican ranks that could provide some strategic insights for Haley now and Biden during the general election. According to exit polling, Trump is not drawing support from moderate conservatives, and a high number of New Hampshire GOP voters selected Haley to indicate their opposition to Trump. Haley should more earnestly court disaffected Republicans moving forward; Biden also needs to build a space for them in his campaign.
Christine Slaughter, assistant professor of political science, College of Arts & Sciences:
Many Republican voters are looking toward the general election, presuming that Trump will be the Republican presidential nominee. The path forward for Haley looks ragged. As former South Carolina governor, losing the Republican primary would be a final dagger to her campaign. The majority of Iowa and N.H. voters support Trump and, apparently, three of his former competitors also support his candidacy. There’s enthusiasm for him, as if he’s the incumbent.
Bruce Schulman, William E. Huntington Professor of History, College of Arts & Sciences:
It was a bad [boring] night for journalists as the results came in more or less as expected. Trump won decisively but not overwhelmingly, in a contest that figured to play more to Haley’s strengths than most other Republican primaries, while Haley finished well enough to stay in the race. The only question is whether Haley will stay in for the long haul hoping that Trump’s legal worries damage his candidacy, or whether she’ll drop out after the next contested race in South Carolina.
Paul Hare, senior lecturer in international relations, Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies, and former British ambassador to Cuba:
Most Republicans agree with Trump that foreign policy is a minor issue. For Trump, it’s personal. On Ukraine, Zelensky would not “do him a favor” over Hunter Biden. [As president, Trump asked Ukraine’s leader to investigate the younger Biden.] Trump likes Putin because Putin likes him. He dislikes Netanyahu because he congratulated Biden [on Biden’s 2020 win]. Trump wants to block Biden’s bipartisan deal on immigration and aid to Ukraine/Israel. He needs the US border issue to fester. Haley recognized US interests in foreign policy, but most Republicans see Democrats as the threat. Saudi Arabia is now the Trump family’s main business partner—in massive Saudi resort and sports deals and billions in investment funds.
Shawn M. Lynch, senior lecturer in social sciences, College of General Studies:
Haley did well among independents, which is trouble for Trump, but she cannot win the nomination. There is no Republican Party any longer, there is only the Trump Party. The Trump “Republican” electorate will not vote for a person of color over Trump. This party will, however, nominate someone who is a convicted rapist and utter incompetent facing 91 felony charges, who may well be in prison by November. The party and its MAGA base have chosen electoral suicide.
Rachel Meade, lecturer in political sciences, College of Arts & Sciences:
This means that Trump is very likely to be the nominee and Haley has become a long-shot candidate. If she can’t win in a state with so many independent voters (when her polling is strongest among independents), then it is unlikely she can win in states with a more traditional Republican voter base. However, this is not a normal election cycle in that the front-runner is under multiple indictments, with the January 6 trial scheduled to start during the primary season. Haley may be staying in the race so she could be poised as next in line in case a dramatic legal development changes Trump’s support base or causes the GOP to drop him. Even so, this looks like a long shot as his base has shown that they mostly see the trials as an example of politically motivated elites going after a leader that they see as a threat.
The Democratic results mean little, but if I were Biden’s campaign manager, my line would be: ‘Biden outperformed Trump in New Hampshire and he wasn’t even on the ballot!’
BU Today: What do those results mean for Biden?
Vigil: As a write-in candidate who didn’t officially campaign in New Hampshire, Joe Biden secured over half of the Democratic votes on Tuesday and earned more than double the combined votes cast for Dean Phillips and [Marianne] Williamson in a decisive, and completely unsurprising, result. As expected, Tuesday’s outcome indicates that neither Phillips nor Williamson are viable Democratic contenders. More revealing is how the GOP primary results could inform Biden’s general election campaign. Similar to 2020, there is a clear opportunity to earn significant votes from anti-Trump Republicans, but Biden will need to be strategic about building bipartisan appeals while coalition-building.
Slaughter: There’s about a 10 percent margin between Haley and Trump in N.H. The primary set a turnout record—with many Trump supporters and voters seeking an alternative in Haley. N.H. is a competitive state, so hopefully Biden can appeal to N.H. voters who are opposed to Trump. Processing write-in ballots takes time, so it is not yet known for sure how well or how poorly Biden fared in N.H., but he had an overwhelming victory in the votes that have been counted.
Schulman: The Democratic results mean little, but if I were Biden’s campaign manager, my line would be: “Biden outperformed Trump in New Hampshire and he wasn’t even on the ballot!”
Hare: Biden got what he wanted: a Trump rematch. Haley showed independents are overwhelmingly against Trump. Biden was fearful of having to face a moderate Haley. Trump, however, has shown most Republicans now believe something Trump himself didn’t believe. His chief of staff and his daughter have testified that Trump knew he lost to Biden. But now millions are pouring money into his coffers because they see the 2020 election as stolen—just like Trump said he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and his support doesn’t waver. But, as Haley remarked in New Hampshire, a Trump victory is what Democrats have been working for.
Lynch: I did not vote for Biden or Trump, but Joe Biden is the most competent president of my lifetime (1971 onward). He will win the November election in a landslide, presuming the contest is Biden vs. Trump. This is because the people that hate Trump hate him more than the people who love Trump love him. Independents have abandoned him (and will continue to do so), and there are too many people who will crawl over broken glass to keep him out of the White House. Besides, he’ll likely be imprisoned by the date of the election, and this will not expand his support.
Meade: Democrats should be focusing on the most likely scenario: a rematch with Donald Trump. They might also note the limits of an anti-Trump, pro-democracy messaging strategy, since Haley has recently been pushing something similar. Democrats will also need to show why they will be affirmatively better for voters than Trump would be—for example, by highlighting specific policies that benefit their constituencies, from the American Rescue Plan or Build Back Better Act. The MAGA base is different from the traditional GOP in having more isolationist foreign policy and more openness to social and economic spending. This can be seen in Trump’s anti-Haley ad in New Hampshire accusing her of wanting to cut Social Security [funding], and that is the area where Biden might be able to make a similar attack on Trump.
BU Today: Why will the result for Republicans be any different than in 2018, 2020, and 2022, when the Trump train crashed?
Vigil: They might not. Edison Research’s exit polling shows Trump’s strength remains his core followers and that many New Hampshire primary participants were motivated opposition voters supporting Haley to register antipathy toward Trump. Trump’s current campaign messaging contains very few efforts to expand his appeal beyond the MAGA faithful—a strategy he also employed in 2020. Sticking with this approach, to win the general election, Trump will have to rely on voters abandoning Biden. While that could happen, it is a risky game plan, since failure to attract moderate Republicans and unaffiliated voters narrows Trump’s potential margin for victory.
Slaughter: Turnout in midterm elections is generally lower than in presidential elections. This election is unprecedented, since Trump is facing criminal indictments and is the first former president to face criminal charges. This is his third presidential campaign. Campaigning will look different since court dates are approaching. It’s clear that despite his legal troubles, and attempt to overthrow the government on January 6, there are still voters and other politicians that support his third presidential bid.
Schulman: I would challenge the premises of this question. If you’re asking whether Trump (or Trumpist candidates) can win a majority of the popular vote, the answer is no. Trump will lose the popular vote by a wide margin, as he did in both 2016 and 2020. But the presidential contest will be decided in a handful of states, all of which Biden won very narrowly in 2020: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Whichever candidate takes three of those five states will win the election. So, Trump could still win the presidency even though I think Biden will handily win the popular vote.
Hare: History suggests there is never going to be a MAGA majority in the US. Trump lost by three million popular votes to Hillary Clinton and eight million to Biden. But, of course, a few states could be rogue outliers. So, 10,000 votes in Georgia, Michigan, or Arizona could decide the election. And America’s justice system may simply be too slow and incompetent to bring to trial Trump’s serious election indictments. They will prove, whatever legal boffins may say, that Trump truly is immune from prosecution. It’s that Fifth Avenue thing again.
Lynch: The Republican Party is dead and will likely be wiped out nationally in November. They will certainly lose control of the House and will not take the Senate. Biden will crush Trump. The party of Reagan and Bush is dead. It surrendered to an incompetent, narcissistic sociopath and adopted irrational, violent, and hateful politics. Good riddance. I feel it likely that some Republican states will refuse to accept the loss and begin talking secession after the election. They have nowhere else to go, with Trump definitively defeated. (Knock on wood!)
Meade: The failure of Trump to get his chosen candidates elected in midterm elections doesn’t necessarily tell us that much about how he would fare running himself. Populist charismatic appeals are usually quite specific to the individual and hard to transfer to someone else, and in Trump’s case, relates to his “outsider” reality TV and business background and unique speaking style and sense of humor. In terms of a repeat of 2020, there are some important differences there too. We are now in a post January 6 landscape, and Trump is under multiple indictments, with trials or even convictions possible by the general election, all of which could potentially benefit Biden. On the other hand, Trump has been out of the public eye long enough, particularly given not being on X (formerly Twitter), and not participating in the primary debates, that the chaos which comes with a Trump presidency and which turned off some of his own voters is less salient. Also, Biden is suffering from a lack of enthusiasm in his own base. In addition to concerns about his age, many younger voters on the left are very unhappy with how he has handled the Israel-Palestine conflict. Dissatisfaction with both Trump and Biden as candidates could also draw a higher than usual third party vote, and I think RFK, Jr., who has an outsider appeal that draws from both left and right, is particularly important to watch.
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