A significant portion of Republican primary voters continue to reject Donald Trump despite there being no viable alternatives on the ballot, and his supporters are rationalizing that lackluster performance with election fraud conspiracy theories.
Trump secured just 75 percent of the vote in the Kansas primary on March 19, but Nikki Haley drew 16 percent of the vote despite dropping out nearly two weeks earlier and "none of the names shown" picked up 5 percent, and the numbers were similar that same day in Arizona and Ohio, reported The Daily Beast.
“There’s still residual hostility about Trump and his tweets. In my own family, that's discussed quite a bit,” said Dave Smith, the chairman of the Pima County GOP in Arizona. “Remember out West, too, that New York persona — the in-your-face persona — it’s got an abrasiveness to it.”
Some non-Trump voters had mailed in their ballots before Haley dropped out March 6, but thousands of non-Trump voters cast ballots to express their dissatisfaction with the presumptive Republican Party nominee.
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“For those who voted after she dropped out, it was simply, the way you get your messages to your national party is how you vote,” Smith said. "[It was] an internal communication document, really.”
Although the former president faces no GOP challengers, 16 presidential primary contests remain on the calendar in states such as Maryland, New Jersey, New York and Wisconsin, and Republicans in those states expect similar results.
“There will be a lot of people voting against Trump,” said Ed Baecher, the chairman of the Fishkill, New York, GOP committee. “These are centrist Americans, people in the center, they’re not the crazy liberals. Trump does a very good job – he does a very good job at disenfranchising people.”
However, die-hard Trump supporters aren't buying those explanations and instead say that Haley votes are evidence of a long-running election fraud scheme.
“Unaffiliated voters are allowed to declare at the polls in Kansas,” said Maria Holiday, GOP chair in Johnson County, Kansas. “Democrats make a habit of being Unaffiliated so they can vote in Republican primaries. Simple explanation really. Kansas is Trump country though.”