Nikki Haley's strong primary performance in Indiana likely has little effect on general election

While former President Donald Trump easily won Indiana’s Republican presidential primary last week, Nikki Haley garnered about 22 percent of the vote.

That’s despite the fact she dropped out of the race two months earlier, before Hoosiers started voting.

Still, University of Indianapolis Associate Professor of Political Scientist Laura Merrifield Wilson cautioned against reading too much into those results.

“There’s certainly that element that feels like a protest vote from Republicans who took the Republican primary ballot,” Wilson said. “But I’d also suspect that this could be, at least in part, a result of the crossover voting — Democrats who looked at the Democratic ballot and saw the race for Senate but otherwise no real incentive to necessarily vote in their primary and instead took the Republican ballot.”

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Haley did best in Indianapolis and its northern suburbs — areas where Democrats are hoping to capitalize in the fall in races further down the ballot.

“For the Democratic Party and certainly those Democratic candidates … it does provide maybe a sense of hope and opportunity that this isn’t necessarily diehard Trump country,” Wilson said.

Wilson said the primary results will have no effect on the presidential race in Indiana, where Trump is almost guaranteed to win easily.

Brandon is our Statehouse bureau chief. Contact him at bsmith@ipbs.org or follow him on Twitter at @brandonjsmith5.