Former President Trump saw thousands of votes cast for his former Republican rival in New Mexico’s primary on Tuesday, continuing a trend seen in past races this election cycle.
Trump received about 85% of the vote in New Mexico’s Republican primary, or about 78,716 votes. The remaining 15% was distributed among Republican presidential candidates who have already withdrawn from the race, including former UN ambassador Nikki Haley, former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswami, and an “undecided” candidate.
Haley received 8.6 percent, or 8,016 votes, with 2,423 New Mexico voters (about 2.6 percent) choosing Christie, while Ramaswamy received about 1 percent, or 881 votes, with 3.3 percent choosing “undecided,” according to the Decision Desk results.
Trump is winning most of the Republican primary easily, but political observers are focusing on how many votes Haley will win after she announced last month that she would support Trump over Biden in November’s presidential election.
Haley, a former Trump campaigner, has won tens of thousands of votes in primaries over the past few months, approaching or exceeding 20% of the vote in several states, including the battleground states of Arizona and Pennsylvania, where she won more than 100,000 votes each earlier this year.
Political observers say the numbers highlight clear dissatisfaction among Republicans with Trump as the party’s presumptive nominee.
“While many consider these votes to be anti-Trump votes, there are also many who agree with her policies and her style of politician,” Republican strategist Ashley Davis told The Hill last month. “These are staunch conservative Republicans who need to break with Trump’s approach.”
Trump has largely dismissed Haley’s primary votes, calling them “very small” last month.
“Well, she won a relatively small percentage of the voters. I won almost, probably close to 90 percent of the vote,” the former president said at the time.
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