Why Nikki Haley polls better against Joe Biden than Donald Trump does

They're independents and moderates. They hate Donald Trump and have mixed views of Joe Biden's job performance as president. And they just might help Republicans close a historic gender gap.

Those are the voters who tell pollsters they’d vote for Nikki Haley over Biden. But if the 2024 election is a rematch of 2020, they would back Biden over Trump.

Polls clearly suggest Haley is a stronger general-election candidate than Trump, with Haley leading Biden by 4 points in the latest RealClearPolitics averages while Trump leads the president by 2 points and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis leads by 1 point. Some polls even show Haley with gaudy, double-digit leads over Biden — including a Wall Street Journal poll released hours before this column published that showed her a stunning 17 points ahead of Biden (Trump led the president by 4).

A POLITICO analysis of recent polls — and data provided exclusively by Marquette Law School pollster Charles Franklin — shows Trump and Haley would assemble different electoral coalitions in matchups against Biden. And the differences aren't just a curiosity: They’re undergirding Haley's case as she seeks an unlikely, come-from-behind victory in the weeks leading up to the first caucuses and primaries.

"I beat Joe Biden by 10 to 13 points" in some of the polls, Haley told Fox News Channel this week, before pressing the electability argument down the ballot: "This is about governorships up and down the ticket. This is about House seats, Senate seats. This is about winning again."

POLITICO examined four recent surveys from major pollsters that included multiple general-election matchups. The Fox News, CNN/SSRS and Marquette polls all showed Haley running stronger against Biden than Trump.

To understand why Haley outperforms Trump against Biden, we looked at what we’ll call Biden-Haley voters: People who would vote for Biden in a 2020 rematch with Trump, but switch to Haley when she’s the hypothetical GOP nominee instead. Roughly 43 percent of the electorate would vote for Biden in either matchup, according to Marquette’s polling, and 47 percent for Trump or Haley but not Biden.

But it’s that 7 percent nationally who would vote for Biden against Trump — but Haley against Biden — who represent a potentially key bloc of swing voters next year.

The Marquette data, which includes both a national survey and one in the key swing state of Wisconsin, show Haley is grabbing the middle of the electorate along partisan and ideological lines in a way that Trump is not. Nationally, 16 percent of voters who say they are independents but lean toward the Democratic Party fall into the category of these Biden-Haley voters. Similarly, 14 percent of self-described moderates in Wisconsin are Biden-Haley voters.

Another place where Haley draws some Biden voters away is among those with weaker impressions of the president’s job performance. In the national Marquette poll, 17 percent of voters who “somewhat disapprove” of Biden’s job performance fall into the Biden-Haley camp. In the Wisconsin poll, it’s 20 percent of those “somewhat disapprove” voters.

That’s a similar phenomenon to the 2022 midterms, when exit polls showed voters who somewhat disapproved of Biden split nearly evenly between Democratic and Republican congressional candidates — despite those negative views of Biden’s job performance.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, views of Trump — who has plenty of intraparty critics, despite his overall dominance of the GOP — are also a key predictor of Biden-Haley voters: Nationally, 14 percent of voters who held a “very unfavorable” opinion of Trump would vote for Biden over Trump, but Haley over Biden.

There’s also some evidence that Haley will draw in some disaffected voters. In Wisconsin, 19 percent of voters who said they were “not too enthusiastic” about the 2024 election were these Biden-Haley voters.

Haley’s support also appears to cut across some demographic lines into groups among whom Trump has especially struggled.

The Marquette polling — both nationally and in Wisconsin — showed men and women made up equal shares of Biden-Haley voters. But other polls suggest a Haley nomination, however unlikely, could narrow the gap between men and women in the 2024 vote.

In last month’s Fox News poll, Trump led Biden by 13 points among men, while Biden led Trump by 4 points among women. If Haley is the nominee instead, she wins men by 16 points while beating Biden by 5 points among women, a net difference of 9 points.

Similarly, the CNN/SSRS poll has Trump ahead by 14 points and Haley up by 12 points among men in matchups with Biden. But while Biden leads Trump by 7 points among women, Biden and Haley are tied in that matchup.

Haley’s potential to close the gender gap while maintaining the GOP’s dominance among men would dramatically alter the electoral math for both parties. According to estimates from the Democratic data firm Catalist, Biden ran 10 points better with women (57 percent) than with men (47 percent) in the 2020 election.

Haley could also bridge some of the class divide that has roiled politics in recent years by bringing some of the better-educated voters who’ve fled Trump back into the Republican fold. In the CNN/SSRS poll, Trump dominates Biden among white voters without college degrees, 63 percent to 31 percent. But Biden leads among white voters who graduated from college, 53 percent to 31 percent.

Matched up with Haley instead, the former South Carolina governor essentially matches Trump’s margins with non-college white voters, leading Biden, 61 percent to 30 percent. But she also eliminates Trump’s deficit with white voters with college degrees, leading slightly, 50 percent to 47 percent.

The Fox News poll was similar. Trump leads Biden by 20 points among non-college white voters but trails by 2 among white voters who graduated from college. Haley has a similar, 23-point lead with white voters who didn’t graduate from college, but she also leads Biden by 15 points among those who did.

The Marquette data similarly showed voters with bachelor’s or post-graduate degrees as more likely to fall into the Biden-Haley camp than their less-educated counterparts, though the differences were smaller than those the school found for ideology and Biden approval.

The final difference between Trump and Haley is Haley’s ability to win crossover voters — a small-but-significant slice of Americans who voted for Biden in the 2020 election but are willing to swing their votes for a Republican next year. Franklin told POLITICO that his data show Haley winning about 15 percent of Biden’s 2020 voters, compared with Trump winning only 5 percent of them.

That’s also apparent in the Fox News poll: Haley wins 14 percent of Biden 2020 voters, while 7 percent of Biden voters say they’d vote for Trump in a 2020 rematch.

Of course, Haley still has — to put it generously — an uphill path to the nomination. Her potential to alter the GOP’s electoral coalition won’t matter if she never makes it past the primary to prove it.