Mulvaney: The primary voters Trump should worry about

Let’s talk about Ryan Binkley.

And no, I don’t know who he is either. But he got 527 votes in the South Carolina primary last week. Which got me thinking:  who votes for Ryan Binkley? The answer, I suppose — other than his immediately family — is that no one does. A vote for Ryan Binkley is not a vote for Ryan Binkley. It’s a protest vote — a none-of-the-above vote. Or, as we learned about in Nevada, a “none of these candidates” vote.

In fact, there were several names on the South Carolina ballot last weekend that arguably filled a protest role. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Vivek Ramaswamy, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, and some guy named David Stuckenberg, for example. All told, the candidates not named Donald Trump or Nikki Haley pulled in about 5,000 votes.

That means 5,000 people took the time to go to the polls for a relatively meaningless primary, when they didn’t have to, and pull the lever for someone who either wasn’t running anymore, or of whom they had never heard. Who does that?

It strikes me that those are the people that Donald Trump needs to worry about the most. Because those are the people that are probably least likely to vote for him in November. Those are die-hard Republicans who considered it their civic duty to vote, but didn’t think that either Donald Trump or Nikki Haley were up to the job. And if they took the time to vote in an arguably inconsequential primary, then they are absolutely, positively going to vote in November, and probably not for Donald Trump.

In South Carolina, of course, that makes no difference. Those 5,000 protest votes won’t change the outcome in solid Trump Country.

But Ryan Binkley is on the ballot in Michigan, as he is (and many others are) in most Super Tuesday states next week, including the critical swing state of North Carolina. A week after that, Binkley will be one of 11 names on the Georgia ballot. Later this year, he’s one of nine on the ballot in Arizona.

Sixteen states vote next week. All of them will have names on the ballot other than Nikki Haley and Donald Trump. (Texas even has an “uncommitted” line.) It will bear watching to see, in the aggregate, how many votes those throwaways attract, especially in the swing states. Because while 1 percent of the vote in South Carolina won’t change an outcome, the loss of 1 percentage point from Trump’s Republican base in Michigan or Georgia or Arizona could cost him the White House.

The people who will vote “uncommitted” on the Democratic ballot today in Michigan will certainly get their share of media attention. Indeed, that is what their effort is all about. But they are really much ado about nothing. Those folks are almost certainly going to come back to Joe Biden in November. They are, after all solidly left-leaning.  And their protest vote is a throwaway, as it is never going to deny Biden the Democratic nomination. 

By November, when the election becomes a glaring binary choice, where not voting for Biden could lead to a Trump victory, one can expect those left-wing “uncommitteds” to be firmly committed to keeping Trump out of office.

Similarly, the roughly 40 percent swath of the GOP primary electorate that is voting for Nikki Haley is raising eyebrows as well. After all, Trump is the de facto incumbent in the party, and whether it is 30 or 35 or 40 percent of Republicans that aren’t voting for him, that’s a big number. Consider what the media firestorm would be if Marianne Williamson or Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.) were pulling such numbers against Biden.

Still, most of Haley’s voters will probably come home as well in November. Certainly there are some never-Trumpers in the Haley camp, but some of those are probably not even Republicans to begin with. (New Hampshire, South Carolina, Michigan, and several Super Tuesday states have “open” primaries where any registered voter can participate in the GOP primary.) 

The rest of the Haley voters may well be the folks who see Haley as representing the Trump policies without the Trump personality. And most people who support Trump on his policies are going to vote for those policies when the Biden policies are on the other side of the ballot in eight months.

The true protest votes might be something else entirely. One does not go stand in line to vote for Ryan Binkley in Michigan, or Asa Hutchinson in Florida, or Johnny Castro in Arizona, and then pull the lever for Trump in November. And in an election that is shaping up to be at least as tight as 2016 and 2020, even small numbers could make a big difference.

Mick Mulvaney, a former congressman from South Carolina, is a contributor to NewsNation. He served as director of the Office of Management and Budget, acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and White House chief of staff under President Donald Trump.