Experts weigh in on Kamala Harris’ ‘millions’ of silent Republican voters in the 2024 election

In the final weeks of the campaign season, Kamala Harris has expanded her reach across the aisle with an appeal to more moderate Republican and Independent voters.

On the campaign trail, the vice president says she is for “all Americans” and has held a series of swing state events with anti-Trump Republicans, including former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney.

It comes as the presidential race appears razor-thin, with Harris leading by less than half a point nationally, according to polling averages.

To win, Harris also needs Republicans to vote for her on November 5.

Earlier this week, Cheney claimed that Harris would get that support from “millions of silent” Republican voters who have turned away from Trump.

But are there actually hordes of these mysterious Republican voters who are leaning toward voting for Democrats? Experts tell DailyMail.com that it is a bit more complex.

“I certainly have a lot of Republicans who will say to me, ‘I can’t be public.’ They are concerned about a whole host of things related to violence, but they will do the right thing,” Cheney said Monday in Oakland County, Michigan.

She claimed that there are “millions of Republicans” who are “concerned” and will “vote their conscience” on November 5.

Republican strategist Kevin Madden believes the idea of ​​”hidden” voters is unfounded at this point, as both campaigns have spent billions identifying voters and what motivates them.

‘Both campaigns know where they stand and what they need to do to mobilize them. The elections are the test of their capabilities,” he said.

“Harris is in a difficult position because, like her first campaign effort in 2019, she enjoyed a brief surge of attention but then failed to close the deal with voters,” he continued.

But others have spent millions and lots of time reaching out to potential Republicans for vice president. They believe that the ‘millions’ estimate is not unfounded.

One group to watch when it comes to Republicans looking to vote Democrat are those who voted for Nikki Haley during the Republican presidential primaries.

In the seven battleground states alone, nearly a million people voted for the former South Carolina governor in the 2024 primaries.

While a large number are expected to return to the fold and vote for Trump, whom she has supported, in the general election, there are still those who are done with the MAGA wing of the party.

Robert Schwartz is the director of Haley Voters for Harris in Michigan.

“Based on the people who have taken the polls, you know that at least a third of these Haley voters, and probably another five or 10 percent, are absolutely going to vote for Kamala Harris,” Schwartz said.

“There will be at least a million, more than, probably closer to 2 million people nationally who voted for Nikki Haley in the Republican primaries and will also vote for Kamala Harris this year,” he said.

His group has tested digital ads targeting center-right voters. It found that the democracy message was not decisive, but the economic message was.

They are now targeting Republican Haley voters and about 300,000 others with the ads in an effort to change their thinking.

In North Carolina, Michael Tucker, executive director of Haley Voters for Harris, who previously served on the Mecklenburg County GOP board, argued that they don’t even need “millions” of Republicans, while Trump only won the state by fewer than 75,000 votes. .

He said a lot of attention has been paid to giving Republicans the “permission structure” to vote for a Democrat without being one because the current Republican Party does not represent the values ​​of Ronald Reagan and John McCain.

While some Republican voters who planned to vote for a Democrat also supported Biden in 2020, he has found that more registered Republicans are joining the group in 2024 as they reach a tipping point with Trump’s rhetoric.

“It’s not a big party anymore,” Tucker said of the Republican Party after Trump rejected support from Haley voters in the primary.

“There is no place in the extreme party MAGA GOP,” he said.

“People are kind of having an identity crisis,” he added about Republicans who don’t support MAGA.

Tucker said there was also a silent element to it.

When he knocks on doors, he encounters divided households in which men and women vote for different candidates and focus on different issues.

“Reproductive rights have struck a chord,” he said, noting that this is part of what’s behind the large gender gap.

As for Haley herself, she has supported Trump. But the ex-president did not want her to campaign for him. When asked about it recently, he touted that she had lost badly to him in the primaries.

John Conway of Republican Voters Against Trump agrees with Cheney’s assessment, pointing out that Trump has been alienating people since 2016.

“There will be a flood of Republican voters who will reject Trump at the ballot box,” Conway said.

He has been working on focus groups for Republican voters, speaking to two-time Trump voters who won’t vote for the ex-president a third time. The main reason they broke with him is the January 6 attack.

Some were hesitant to vote for him in 2020, but the insurrection was the final blow. Since then, some have shared that Trump has become more extreme in his statements about the “enemy within” and that he has also become a convicted felon.

Conway said the majority of Republicans will support Trump and many will do so enthusiastically, but he is looking at the margins he thinks will decide the election.

Republican Voters Against Trump also conducted focus groups with so-called “flippers” who voted once for Trump and once for Biden. He said some of them fell back in the Trump-Biden debate in June, but when Harris took over the ticket she was able to reconsolidate some of those voters.

Those who voted for Biden but are returning to Trump have shared that their top issue is the economy, followed by immigration.

Conway said that while the Republican coalition will have changed from the past in 2024, the vast majority that turned away from Trump are still stuck for Harris.

Where the vice president has also been vulnerable is in being an undefined candidate with such a short campaign, but Conway believes she has been able to successfully introduce herself to these voters.

What remains to be seen is who will actually turn out and who will stay home on Election Day, but more and more Republicans continue to speak out.

Former GOP Michigan Congressman Fred Upton, who served in the House of Representatives for 36 years, was one of the last Republicans to endorse Harris this week.

Waukesha, Wisconsin, Mayor Shawn Reilly, who represents a deeply Republican stronghold, is also among those publicly speaking out about voting for Harris. He left the Republican Party after the January 6 attack on the US Capitol in 2021.

Reilly previously voted for a third party in 2016 and for Biden in 2020, but kept that to himself.

“I feel in my heart that this is something I have to say,” he told a local TV station. He said his vote this year is against Trump.