Donald Trump, who has won a series of victories in the race for the Republican nomination, aims to close the game against Nikki Haley on Tuesday's Super Tuesday.
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But these electoral successes have also exposed any weaknesses in the former president that could complicate his recapture of the White House.
The tempestuous septuagenarian won all of his elections thanks to the support of his support base, a sea of Make America Great Again redcaps who are still fiercely loyal.
But he has also often lost significant numbers of votes among moderate Republicans and independents – votes that are essential if he is to prevail against Democratic President Joe Biden in November.
In both New Hampshire and South Carolina, those voters largely preferred Nikki Haley, the last Republican in the race who stood in her way.
The fifty-year-old, a former American ambassador to the UN under Donald Trump, cultivates the image of a more moderate candidate who promises to restore some “normality” among conservatives.
However, according to a poll taken in South Carolina last Saturday, 40% of his supporters said they opposed Donald Trump's candidacy.
“A big wake-up call,” said Alyssa Farah Griffin, the former president’s former communications director, while he was at the White House.
“Someone running as a virtual incumbent president — Donald Trump — gets 60 percent of the vote and 40 percent are against him? “It’s not exactly a coronation,” she said during an exchange on CNN.
“Donald Trump has a problem, whether he wants to admit it or not,” Nikki Haley warned in a statement Tuesday after losing a new primary to the former leader in Michigan.
“40% of Republican voters want nothing to do with him and he is doing absolutely nothing to bring them into his increasingly exclusive group,” she said.
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Nikki Haley is keen to criticize her rival's electoral successes. The Trump camp brushes aside its arguments and points to polls that show outgoing President Joe Biden is also perceived very poorly among independent voters.
“Trump is well positioned to win the election. “He's focused on issues that voters clearly care about – transparent government, fiscal responsibility, energy independence and jobs,” Charlie Kolean, a Republican strategist, told AFP.
But Joe Biden's campaign team is betting that the gap between the two candidates in the most hotly contested states will narrow as Donald Trump, his flights, his escapades and his legal problems again take a central place in people's everyday lives. voters.
More than his performances in the primaries, it is the numerous charges against the billionaire — and all the time he will have to spend in court in 2024 — that is troubling Keith Nahigian, a former member of Donald Trump's team.
“The most important thing in a campaign is time – time to raise money, meet people, travel, anything that takes time could be detrimental to the candidacy,” he says.
For Bill Kristol, a former Bush-era Republican official and well-known critic of Donald Trump, the math is simple: If the former president can win back two-thirds of Nikki Haley's supporters, he would likely have support among Republicans of around 92 % received – approximately his result for 2020.
“That was enough to narrowly elect Biden,” he assured in an interview with The Bulwark.
“To say that there is no resistance within the Republican Party is far too pessimistic,” he emphasized.