How the Nikki Haley Voters Are Breaking, With Kristen Soltis Anderson
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Hi, I'm Tara Palmieri. I'm Puck's senior political correspondent, and this is Somebody's Gotta Win. Okay, we are less than two weeks from Election Day. What are we going to do until then except agonize over early voting returns?

I know, I know. It's reading the tea leaves. It's fruitless. You can't compare 2024 to 2020, a once-in-a-lifetime COVID pandemic where people weren't leaving their houses. They were voting by mail. And then you have to consider the fact that the Republican Party has spent a lot of time in the past four years convincing voters that

Voting early and mail-in ballot voting is not rigged, and they've worked really hard to get Republicans out. But we're seeing a lot of trends where Republicans are getting out early to vote. The question is, is this a sign of enthusiasm, or are they just getting voting over with and moving on with their lives? Traditionally, Democrats have voted early, and Republicans voted on Election Day. I've got all of the top data gurus from the battleground states, the nonpartisan, straight shooters,

giving me their read on what to make of the early voter data. Because after all, what else do we really have? I mean, the polls show them tied and it's something to look at for sure. I

You find out which voters are coming out from what counties, what party. And it's really the best data that we have. I'll be sharing that analysis with you on the show next week. If you can't wait until then, go to puck.news slash Tara Palmieri and sign up for my newsletter, The Best and the Brightest. I will have all of this analysis in my newsletter on Thursday night. You can use the discount code Tara20 for 20% off a subscription at puck.com.

And you can read it there first. On this show, I have Kristen Soltis Anderson, a top Republican pollster. We are going to talk about those soft Republicans, those center-right independents who are just on the fence. Maybe they're double haters. They think Trump is too chaotic, but they aren't convinced that Harris isn't a liberal. And they just don't know what they're going to do. Or they need a little bit of convincing to go out and vote for Harris rather than stay on the couch.

And so Harris has been on the campaign trail with Liz Cheney, who's offered her a little bit of conservative street cred. And she's out there with a very strong message on democracy. It's something that Democrats have pivoted to in the past few weeks as they warn voters that Trump is a fascist. We'll see if that messaging actually works. Do they need to hear more from Harris about what she's going to do for them, her plan, her vision for the presidency? Is she already preaching to the choir? Are

Are these soft Republicans converted? How will these Nikki Haley voters, these Republicans who are tired of the chaos from Trump, how will they vote? Will they just hold their nose and vote for Trump? I talked to Kristen Soltis Anderson about all of this and more. She's been following them throughout the election.

Kristen, what a treat to have you back third time this election season. And I think we started the show and you were on and you came back on to talk about how Trump had the Oprah effect, this like sort of celebrity effect that gave him a certain carte blanche that other politicians have.

But you're a Republican pollster, so I figured I would check in with you about how these Nikki Haley voters are breaking. How are they falling during this election? Are they leaning towards Harris or are they leaning towards Trump? So I think it's important to differentiate Republicans who like Nikki Haley or center-right-leaning people who like Nikki Haley and someone who voted for Nikki Haley in a Republican primary.

Because ultimately, someone who voted in a Republican primary, that is a very committed partisan. That is the type of person...

who tends to come home. And I think you see this pop up in a lot of data. I believe there was a poll that came out of Georgia earlier this week. They were taking a look at how voters were breaking and they found that among Democrats, only 0.2% of Democrats broke from their party and voted for Trump. And among Republicans, it was something like 1.3% broke away and voted for Harris.

You'd rather have 1.3 instead of 0.2. You'd rather be making inroads with the other party, but those are such small numbers. I think for me, what is more interesting is the type of person who is not a Republican primary voter. They're not that committed. They're not that partisan, but they would normally lean Republican, and maybe they wish Nikki Haley had been the Republican nominee before.

And they are somebody for whom Donald Trump is perhaps a bridge too far. I think those people exist, but I'm always skeptical when I see people cite the numbers of like, oh, in state X, Y, and Z, X number of voters turned out to vote for Nikki Haley in the primary. Even Nikki Haley herself, quote unquote, came home to Trump. So you think it might be fruitless for the Harris campaign to try to chase the Republican registered primary voter who voted for Nikki Haley? Well, I-

wouldn't necessarily say fruitless because the, the odd thing about an election being this close is that it feels like nothing matters, but really anything can matter. Um, something very, very small, if it moves the right couple hundred voters in the right couple of counties in the right state, I mean, that could be the ball game. So it's, it's a moment where I don't want to say anything doesn't matter or is fruitless. Um,

I think the reason why, if you are the Harris campaign, you take this gamble and you try so hard to go on stage with Liz Cheney and talk about owning a gun and like really make the case to reach out to the sort of college educated Republican woman.

you know, to the extent that they're that that that group is available to you. I get I get going for them because somebody who is a primary voter is definitely a general election voter. And so right now, campaigns are making decisions about how to use their resources. And you can either spend time going and talking to people who, you know, would vote for you if they voted. But you've got to drag them to the polls.

or you can spend time talking to somebody who you do not have to persuade them that voting is important or they should get out to vote. There's somebody who is a very, very, very habitual voter. You're just trying to persuade them to not vote for your opponent, leave it blank, or better yet, even vote for you. So the math there is that these are an appealing group to speak to because you know they're going to vote.

And at least if you can persuade them to leave the top of the ticket blank and they would normally be a Trump voter, that the math is good there. It is, I think, a little bit harder to take someone who is not really interested in voting and drag them to the polls. Got it. So would you say this group of voters are still undecided at this point? You know, there was, I believe, a poll that came out earlier this week from Emerson.

Emerson, I think it was, where they were asking people, when did you decide? And for voters that were deciding within the last week or two, they were leaning more toward Harris.

I think by continuing to try to do these things where she is signaling, hey, Republicans, I promise it's okay. You can vote for me. I'm not going to turn America into a progressive, liberal, crazy wasteland. San Francisco. She's trying to make that case. But I think that she's, where I think she is missing out on the opportunity to actually close the deal and why you still have this skepticism.

is I still don't think she has explained everything

the why behind her conversion from 2019 Kamala Harris to 2024 Kamala Harris effectively. Back in 2019, she took a number of positions that are total non-starters with anybody who has ever even thought positively about Nikki Haley for a moment, right? They're just there in like opposite universes. And she has come out and said, you know, I've changed my position on fracking. I've

But it's one thing to say I've changed my position. And it's another thing to explain why in a way where people feel like I know who you are at your core. Like, love or hate Donald Trump, I feel like I know what he is at his core. People have made their bargain with that. When he says he wants to deport Trump,

Everybody who's here illegally, like I take him at his word. I believe him. I don't think he's just saying it to be, I think that's like genuinely in his heart of hearts what he wants to do. And when he says he's going to be a dictator on day one, you think the same thing as well? Maybe, maybe not on that particular one. I think some of it is like weird, but I do think-

That when he says he wants to stack his administration with people who are going to be loyal to him and he's going to try to push out anybody who will stand in his way, I take him at his word on that. Like there are, I feel like I have a sense of what Donald Trump wants to be as president. That's pretty clear. And with Harris, I feel like on the spectrum of,

who she was on the Democratic primary debate stage to the second coming of Dick Cheney. Like, I don't know where she in her core actually falls on that spectrum. Maybe she doesn't even know. But I certainly, as a voter who consumes this stuff and follows this day in and day out, I don't actually know where I would place her

as genuinely being. And so if you are a Nikki Haley-like type Republican, you might look at that and go like, I just think that's too much of a risk. I don't know that I fully buy it. Or if she had come out and said, you know what, here is why my position has changed on fracking. Here's why my position has changed on immigration. You know what, we thought we had the right policy, but it turns out we don't.

I have also been alarmed by what we've seen at the border. And so I have realized we need to change tactics. Like those just little things like that. It doesn't have to be a dissertation. What she said so far is like, I've been around the country. My values remain the same. You know, I've got to work across the aisle. It's very, it's too big. My values have remained the same, but what are those values? Like that's still. And the other thing too, is that, you know,

My friends who are supporters of Harris will push back and they will go, what more does everybody want from her? She has said, here's what I'll do on student loans. Here's what I'll do on home buyer tax credit. Here's what I'll do. Like she's given policies. But the question is not like what's your 15 point plan that you have to click five clicks on the website to find.

It is who are you in your core? What is it that you believe and what animates you? And I still think that is too much of a question mark. And that is probably what is holding those Nikki Haley Republicans back now.

from feeling that they could go all the way. Something that they talked about on stage, Nikki Haley and Liz Cheney on their tour right now is giving women permission to vote in the ballot box against their husbands, against their families that are perhaps, you know, Republican, Trump-leaning. I mean, I see that in my own family. My mom whispering on my podcast, I think I'll vote for Harris, but don't tell anyone. Like, what is this whole idea of giving people permission to

to vote and not maybe tell their friends or family. Yeah. Well, I wonder, people bring up this example a lot of someone who she maybe secretly...

wants to vote for Harris, but she doesn't want to tell her husband. But I can just as easily imagine someone who secretly wants to vote for Trump, but knows if she brings it up at book clubs, she is going to get like the weird looks from all of her friends who want to know why she wants to take them back to the Stone Ages. I 100% believe that there are a lot of women for whom the toxicity and the polarization that we are experiencing right now makes them want to like not put up a yard sign, not say anything, just go vote.

But I do push back on the notion that every single one of those women who's like holding their vote a little closer to the vest is like secretly pining for Kamala Harris. Like I can, it's easy for me to imagine the inverse.

Yeah, I get the feeling from these persuadable voters, these remaining like Nikki Haley voters who I'd probably put my mom in that bucket as well, even though she doesn't vote in primaries. I really see them as like double haters a bit. Like, I don't think they like either choice. And so that's what they're struggling with right now. Do you think that's right? Yeah. And the number of quote unquote double haters has definitely fallen in the polls from its peak.

which was like around the time that Donald Trump was getting convicted of felonies and Joe Biden was facing a lot of questions about his stamina and mental acuity. You know, there was this peak in like the early summer of people going, I honest to God cannot believe this is the choice we have. And we've now gotten to a place where Republicans, I think, especially post that first assassination attempt and that really unifying Republican convention, like

Republicans have gotten behind Donald Trump. They have decided that they're not just holding their nose. Like, they actually kind of like him. And they're excited about the prospect of him being back in power again. And similarly, Harris...

For any voter that was like, I just wish Biden would step aside. I can't do this. She has done a really good job of building her favorables among Democrats in ways that never showed up in polls a year ago. When you would ask people, do you have a favorable or unfavorable view of Kamala Harris? A year ago, even among Democrats, her numbers weren't great. And now they're like- They've jumped like 10 points. Yeah, right? So the number of true double haters-

is smaller than it was in its heyday earlier this year, but they still exist. And I think it's less about giving someone permission to do something that they don't really want to do, or pardon me, give them permission to do something that they really want to do, but maybe feel like they shouldn't. And it's more about

giving someone the reason to believe that this thing's not going to turn out as horrible as you thought. Yeah. Ugh. If I cast this ballot, am I going to regret it? How much am I going to regret having done this? And that's in some ways why I think you're seeing this...

This end of, you know, end of the fourth quarter turn back to the democracy messaging that Biden had used pretty significantly. I think in some ways it's a little surprising, but I almost think it is very squarely targeted at that kind of voter who is maybe a double hater. And they're trying to figure out who can I make peace with more? I may like Donald Trump, but, and I feel like the message from Harris to those voters is that,

What if Donald Trump does another January 6th? Or what, like, do you want to, will you be able to go to sleep at night knowing, like, I voted for this guy? That seems to be, I do not have a window into what internal Harris campaign discussions look like, but I'm assuming that that is part of the rationale, is that they think that for those remaining double haters, if you can just make, like,

You don't want to put your name on this. You don't want to be part of this, right? Look how this might go, right?

Um, that's why they're trying to raise those, that specter at the end. Yeah. A democratic pollster just tweeted at me because I spoke about this last night on CNN. It's the best testing closing argument for the Harris team to deploy against Trump, particularly with independence, even more than arguments about Roe, social security and his character. If I'm putting my hat on as a Republican strategist, the message I would be the most concerned about is the Roe message, um,

Because that's the sort of thing where even if you are somebody who says, yeah, I would vote for Trump on the economy. Yeah, I think Trump might even be better at national security. But I feel like I've got to send a message on the abortion issue. I mean, the numbers on that have moved really dramatically since the overturning of Roe. It used to be that America

like a leaned more pro-choice, but like it wasn't a really high testing issue. And we were closer to parody and actually the people for whom it was a motivating issue. It was a little bit closer between pro-choice and pro-life. Like the robust, like I vote on abortion and I'm pro-life community was a real political force. And the math on it has just gotten so lopsided to where it's

That's why Republicans do not want to talk about the issue at all, where you can imagine a decade or two ago them thinking that a debate about abortion might not harm them and could even favor them. Like right now, I think that if the Harris campaign wanted to be as scary as possible to Republicans up and down the ballot, they would be talking more about Roe.

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I just want to go back to this whole idea of Cheney and Harris. They are sort of an odd couple, right? And it is at the same time, the Harris campaign is putting up signs inside of like the bathroom stalls, women's bathroom stalls saying like a voting booth is safe, like a bathroom stall. You can do whatever you want in there. No one has to know kind of thing. It does seem like

They're trying to appeal to white women with this sort of like Cheney transference. And I don't know, does that work? Is Liz Cheney someone that...

you know, white women look up to is this whole bathroom stall. You're safe to vote how you really feel. You can side with those Cheney, like do these arguments work? I know you said abortion would probably be stronger, but for this certain type of swing voting, perhaps independent Republican right, you know, center right leaning Republican woman, is this, does this messaging work? I remain skeptical of the idea that, um,

an endorsement from a political figure really matters. I think it'd be much more powerful to hear from, and not necessarily celebrities, but like I think trusted cultural figures who don't have the toxicity of politics like that stain on them, I think is probably a little bit more motivational to hear

To the kind of voter who's like, gosh, I don't know what I want to do, but there's this sign in this bathroom stall. But I also, again, I just push back on the idea that there are young women out there who lean toward Harris, but are afraid to do so because it is in some way socially unacceptable. Like the ecosystem of news and information that young women consume is not Trumpy at all.

I don't get the feeling they're young women. I get the feeling they're middle-aged women, 60 plus. I feel like the idea that there is social stigma, that there are women out there who are facing social stigma for voting against Harris. If you are the type of woman who is feeling social stigma that you can't say that you're voting for Harris-

you are almost certainly not somebody who's like really motivated by Liz Cheney. I'll just say it. I don't know that she motivates anyone. I guess she gives you credentials. It says like, I'm not the most liberal person to ever run for president because Liz Cheney will sit down with me. Is that what that signals? I guess so. But I think it would be, in some ways, I almost think it would be more credible for these people

Republican ex-Republicans who are endorsing Harris to come out and be forthright about the ways in which they disagree with her rather than there have been a lot of these kind of ex-Trump

or ex-Republican, you know, never Trump folks who also wind up drifting to the left on policy. And it leads them like conservative media say, see, look, they were secret Democrats all along. And you saw actually, you saw some of that this week when Liz Cheney at the rally with Harris said,

I believe did say like, I don't know about this whole repealing of Roe thing. She had been in Congress as one of the most conservative, very pro-life members. And so it, in some ways it for conservatives, it seems like, oh, it's undercutting the message that you held onto your conservative principles and

But just this one time, you have to make this exception. If you're also then endorsing Harris's policy positions too, and I feel like that's where a lot of the ex-Republican or I'm still Republican, but I can't with Trump, why they wind up losing the ability to really move Republican voters is when they make that drift on policy and say, well, you know,

Maybe she actually is good on issue X, Y, or Z. Then suddenly it's like, oh, no, no, no, no. And suddenly the skepticism goes back up. Well, it seems like Harris is spending a lot of time on the campaign trail with Liz Cheney. And, you know, Jonathan Martin at Politico sort of made the argument that

Their case is too backward looking. It's too, you know, scary Trump anti-democracy and it's not future enough about what Harris can offer. And that like voters are going in there asking like, okay, well just give me a vision for the future. What can you do for me? Give me something tangible. And they're not getting enough of that, that the pitch is just too big.

I want to talk to you about the idea of Trump going on the road with the actual Nikki Haley, right? Mark Caputo at Bulwark reported that there's talks for the two of them to go out in the final week and hit the campaign trail together. Although he went on Fox and Friends and sort of like trashed her and was like, I beat her by this much in the primary. Not sure that really helps, right? And you know, she pretty much held her nose and gave that RNC speech. But

Does Trump get any transference from Nikki Haley, from that endorsement, from that speech, from going out on the road with them when it comes to these same undecided, independent, right-leaning, you know, center-right-leading voters? I mean, I think if you are...

Donald Trump, the benefit is it underscores my party is not divided. We are not some fractured mess. And you can really say that, I think, of both parties right now. Sometimes you head into an election and you're like, man, Democrats in disarray or Republicans are a party riven by divisions. And like right now, both parties are really unified around and excited by their candidates. And so I think by traveling with Nikki Haley and

It's underscoring that. It's saying like, we're all in this together. Republicans are all locking arms one-on-one and we are focused. And that is the sort of thing you do to maintain those numbers where you are only losing 1% of Republicans to the other side. Marginal election, right? As they keep saying. Kristen, we're on the ringer. It's all about predictions.

What do you think? I think that right now, not only are the polls too close to, it would be irresponsible of me to make a prediction given how close the polls are. And the fact, Nate Cohn at the New York Times wrote, he put together a chart that is going to haunt me for the next two weeks. And it is a chart where it shows, here's what the polls say now.

here's what the polls would, here's what the result will be if the polls are as wrong as they were in 2022, which wasn't actually as wrong as people think. They were pretty good, but they were a little bit rosy for Republicans. Or, and here's what the election would look like if the polls are as wrong as they were in 2020. And the results are like opposite universes. Like there's a chance that this is an election that's very close and it takes days, if not weeks, to sort through who wins.

And there is a chance that if the polls are as wrong as they were four years ago, that like Donald Trump wins Wisconsin by nine and we have locked this up quickly. There's also, of course, a chance that the polls are undercounting Democrats and you wind up with

Harris locking it up within a day or two of election day. So it's an overcorrection is what you're thinking could happen as well. Yeah, I think the big question mark pollsters are facing is when Donald Trump is on the ballot, do weird things happen that polls are simply unable to account for no matter how much we try, no matter how much noodling and research we do and how much we try to wait and balance and correct and oversample and all of that.

that none of it matters because Donald Trump just introduces a weirdness that our industry cannot grapple with. And that has happened in the last two presidential elections. And we can't rule it out this time around. But a lot of work has gone into trying to avoid having that happen again, which is why I don't immediately say, oh, you should just give Donald Trump like four bonus points because the polls are probably missing him like

The industry's tried really hard to avoid that outcome. We would all very much like to be right. But there's still just a chance that the Trump factor is very hard to account for. While I won't predict who will win, I can predict what the big narrative will be coming out of the election. Yeah, please tell me. What do you think? What I can tell you that has been a consistent pattern across my polls, other people's polls, is that the polarization we've seen

by race and by generation, I think is actually going to shrink. I think that white voters and voters of color are going to look a little more like one another in how they vote overall. I think older voters and younger voters overall are going to look a little more like one another. But the gender gap, I think, is going to be huge. And so, you know, of course, if Harris wins, it's going to be, you know,

women have won this for her. The women have broken this glass ceiling. I think if Trump wins, it's going to be like the men strike back. But I think that gender is

is the thing that we see where I see young men and young women behaving very differently. I see senior women, they've swung very heavily into Harris's camp in a lot of the data I've seen. And so could it be something weird happening in the polling? It could. But ultimately, this gender gap looks like it's going to be historic. And that coming at the same time that this election could happen,

mean the first female president. I just think that is, I am more confident that that will be the big storyline one way or another coming out of this election. And how are you feeling about the returns from early voting right now? I am totally unwilling to make big judgments on that. Like you'll see things like commentators who really know what they're talking about, who follow things like politics in Nevada. They'll say, oh my gosh, Clark County, the Republican-

returns are incredible. It's looking wonderful for them. This is huge for the GOP. The thing you have to remember is we're comparing everything to a baseline that is 2020. And that baseline, I think, should come with an asterisk because we were in the middle of a global respiratory pandemic. And so we don't have like a normal year to compare things to, to say, oh, this is better than we expect, or this is worse than we expect. Because everything we're comparing it to is

pandemic year. So that's why I'm reluctant to make big sweeping conclusions yet about early vote data. I know there are places, again, like Clark County, where Republicans feel like, hey, this is looking pretty good. But it all requires that you have comparable data from four years ago and that it's like apples to apples-ish. And I'm not 100% convinced that it is.

Got it. All right. Well, thanks, Kristen. This was really great. I appreciate your time. I know you're off to CNN to give your expert commentary before their big town hall tonight. Good luck. We are all exhausted, I can say. I was on last night. You're on all day today and we'll make it through. We just got to get to Thanksgiving and maybe we'll know who wins by then. I thought it was December 17th that we have to get through. I will adjust my timeline accordingly.

All right. Thanks so much. That was another episode of Somebody's Got to Win. I'm your host, Tara Palmieri. If you like this podcast, please subscribe, rate it, share it with your friends. If you like my reporting, please go to puck.news slash Tara Palmieri and sign up for my newsletter, the best and the brightest. You can use the discount code Tara20 for 20% off a subscription at Puck. That's uppercase T-A-R-A-20. See you again this week.