Republican rebels make final plea to anti-Trump moderates

A recent poll found the number of Republicans voters who now plan to vote for the Democrat nominee had almost doubled to 9 per cent, up from 5 per cent a month ago.

Kamala Harris speaks at the Resch Expo Center in Green Bay, Wisconsin, on Thursday night. Picture: AFP

Donald Trump is leaking voters from within his own Republican Party as the 2024 election race enters the final stretch, with Kamala Harris making gains among moderate conservatives put off by the former president.

A string of recent opinion polls suggests that even as Democrat nerves mount over their nominee’s overall polling numbers, her pitch to disaffected Republican and independent voters is bearing late dividends.

A recent New York Times/Siena College poll found the number of Republican voters who now plan to vote for Ms Harris had almost doubled to 9 per cent, up from 5 per cent a month ago. A poll by Cygnal, conducted in early October, also found 9 per cent of Republicans breaking for Ms Harris, tripling from 3 per cent in September.

As the two campaigns make their final pitch to wavering voters, one Republican-led company is seeking to drive that wedge into the moderate flank of the GOP and tip the race in Ms Harris’s favour.

Republican Voters Against Trump has incurred the wrath of the Trump campaign with a high-profile advertising blitz sharing personal accounts from conservative voters who have set aside party loyalties to vote Democrat for the first time in their lives. Billboards, TV and social media ads have appeared across the battleground states, using those stories to appeal to centre-right voters wary of a second Trump term.

“We know voting is tribal,” said John Conway, the group’s head of strategy. “These are people who identify as Republicans, who spent their entire lives voting for Republicans, and they don’t necessarily feel comfortable voting for a Democrat.

“They need to hear from other Republicans and other people like them, who say, ‘I’m supporting Kamala Harris because I believe she’s the better choice than Donald Trump this November’.”

Mr Conway, himself a former Republican campaign staffer, said the latest swing towards Ms Harris among centre-right voters reflects a process that has been under way since Mr Trump seized control of the party in 2016. As his hardline Make America Great Again movement became the dominant force in Republican politics, and traditional conservatives were driven to the margins, that exodus has accelerated.

Joe Biden won 6 per cent of Republican-leaning voters in his victory over Mr Trump in 2020, underpinned by a shift among college-educated conservative women in the suburbs. With Mr Trump back on the ballot and pushing a more extreme vision for his second term, Mr Conway expects Ms Harris to outperform Mr Biden among moderate conservatives in November.

“Donald Trump has been alienating Republicans ever since he ran in 2016,” he said. “Cycle after cycle, we’ve been seeing this realignment of college-educated suburban Republicans who are now part of the Democratic coalition.”

Mr Trump’s attempt to overturn his 2020 defeat, which culminated in the deadly riot at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, was the main reason cited by this new wave of Republican defectors, Mr Conway said.

“There are two-time Trump voters who supported him reluctantly in the 2020 election and then saw the consequences of his election lies … So I think the fact that Harris could get anywhere from 9, 10, 11 per cent of Republicans in 2024 is catastrophic for Donald Trump’s chances.”

Disillusioned Republicans have been a Democrat target since the primaries earlier this year exposed a weakness in Mr Trump’s support. Although the former president dominated the race, a large minority of moderate Republicans preferred Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor, whose traditional brand of conservatism won her up to 20 per cent of the vote in some states. Ms Haley has since endorsed Mr Trump but the Harris campaign believes many of her supporters are up for grabs.

Rebel Republicans were given prime speaking slots at the Democratic convention in August. Ms Harris has won endorsements from prominent Republican figures, most notably Liz Cheney, who led a congressional investigation of Mr Trump’s role in the January attack on the Capitol.

In a focus group of undecided conservative voters in swing states, canvassed by Republican Voters Against Trump the day after Ms Harris’s debate against Mr Trump last month, several people described her as “presidential”.

Yet as Ms Harris’s momentum has stalled in recent days, the groups have also revealed a scattering of voters drifting back to Mr Trump as the former president makes gains of his own, eating into traditionally Democrat voting blocs among black and Latino men.

THE TIMES