Do The Democrats Really Want To Run Against Trump?

Ever since I noted Andrew McCarthy's resuscitation of that meme last week at National Review Online, I've kept it in the back of my mind as I watch developments. NRO repeated it this morning in response to Trump's New Hampshire win:

The Democrats want Trump as their opponent in the belief that they can salvage Joe Biden’s prospects by making the race all about Trump, and last night showed, once again, that they are making a sensible, if cynical, calculation. That independents turned out in such large numbers to cast votes in the Republican primary simply to protest Trump was an early indication of how he could lose the middle in November.

Republican voters could have avoided giving Democrats what they wanted, but instead are putting all their chips on their riskiest electoral bet.

The first problem with this view is CNN's reporting of the New Hampshire exit polls:

Roughly 7 in 10 of the New Hampshire voters backing Trump said they were registered as Republicans. . . . Haley’s backers present a near mirror image: about 7 in 10 said they were registered as undeclared prior to Tuesday[.]

The question is how many Haley voters were effectively Democrats voting for her in order to improve her chances of becoming the nominee, especiallly with Biden off the ballot. Certainly television interviews found numerous voters who claimed to be such. According to a local source,

Nearly 4,000 New Hampshire Democrats changed their party affiliation to undeclared or Republican during the window from Sept. 14 to Oct. 7, indicating they may participate in the Republican primary.

With about 161,000 Haley votes total in last night's primary, this amounts to potentially 2% of all Haley voters being former registered Democrats intending outright to boost Haley's chances in the Republican primary and should be factored into Haley's vote total. In fact, Just the News reports exit polls showed about 6% of Tuesday’s GOP primary voters identified as Democrat. Nevertheless, with Trump winning about 54% of the Republican vote, he achieved a credible victory even with some Haley voters unlikely ro aupport any Republican in the general election.

A second problem with the idea that Democrats want Trump as the nominee is the Democrat donors who've supported Haley. According to Forbes,

Billionaire LinkedIn cofounder and Democratic donor Reid Hoffman gave $250,000 to support former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley’s GOP presidential primary campaign—joining a growing list of deep-pocketed donors supporting Haley, as many view her as the best alternative to former President Donald Trump, reports Sara Dorn.

Hoffman, a frequent Trump critic who has helped finance various efforts against the former president, recently donated $250,000 to the pro-Haley super PAC Stand For America Fund Inc., Hoffman’s political advisor Dmitri Mehlhorn told Forbes after the donation was first made public by the New York Times.

He is not the only monied Democratic donor getting behind Haley: JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon—who said he has been in contact with Haley, but stopped short of endorsing her and has not donated to her campaign—urged business leaders and “liberal Democrats” last week to support Haley as “a choice on the Republican side that might be better than Trump.”

NeverTrumpers also rely on outlier polls to promote Haley, including this morning at the NeverTrump Hot Air aggregator: Polls Suddenly Looking Different Now That Trump Sealed the Deal?

Yep. Susquehanna shows President Joe Biden beating Donald Trump by more than 7 points, at least if the election were held today.

In 2020 the election was decided by 1 point, and that was before the past 3 years of failures have driven Joe Biden’s approval rating into the toilet.

So what’s going on? Is this a bad poll? A biased poll? An outlier–even pollsters will tell you that 1 out of 5 polls are just wrong, and the margin of error is almost 4%.

But geez, that is a shocking poll.

The problem for the headline is that the poll was taken between January 15 and January 24, after Iowa but before New Hampshire, and thus before anyone could have asserted tht Trump "sealed the deal". The idea that Haley could do better than Trump against Biden is wishful thinking -- according to Slate, which certainly prefers Biden,

Exit polling in New Hampshire found that Trump won registered Republicans on Tuesday by fifty points. Strange things have happened in American politics recently, but the Republican Party awarding its nomination to someone who is losing its voters by 50 is not going to be one of them.

In the unlikely event Haley secured the Republican nomination, she would lose much of the Republican base in the general election, while Trump would keep it but is continuing to win over key elements of the former Democrat base, including labor, Latins, Jews, and increasing numbers of African-Americans. Why would Democrats prefer Trump as an opponent when Haley would effectively be a repeat of Romney in 2012?