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By Kate Plummer
Senior US News Reporter
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People protesting against Joe Biden and Donald Trump by voting for other candidates in primary elections could hamper both politician's efforts in the upcoming presidential election, experts have revealed.
Speaking to Newsweek, academics reacted to the trend of Republicans and Democrats alike using the primary votes as a way to voice their dissent about the direction of their parties.
In March, Biden and Trump both received enough delegates across multiple primary votes to secure their party nominations for November's presidential election.
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However the primary votes for other states are still ongoing, and in some, people are voting for other candidates to express their opposition to Trump and Biden, respectively, despite the pair being all but confirmed for the election.
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Earlier this month, for example, former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, who dropped out of the presidential race in March, won 20 percent of the vote in Maryland, and 17.8 percent in Nebraska. While Trump still won with a resounding majority, it showed he does not have the full support of Republicans in those states. A similar pattern emerged in other states.
Meanwhile, Biden has also garnered opposition from members of his own party. 17.9 percent of voters opted for the "uncommitted" option in the Kentucky Democratic primary and 13.3 percent did so in Michigan, with some saying they were protesting against Biden's response to the latest war in Gaza.
Newsweek contacted representatives for Trump and Biden by email to comment on this story.
Speaking about the trend, Christopher Phelps, a professor of modern American history at the University of Nottingham in the U.K., said those who vote for Haley will be "a significant concern for Trump" while Biden also faces "a big challenge" with his own dissidents.
"The voting for Nikki Haley even after her withdrawal from the Republican race is a significant concern for Trump, because her voters skew wealthy, higher educated, and women—all demographics that tend to turn out in elections—and are bothering to vote for her despite Trump's inevitability of becoming the Republican nominee," he told Newsweek. "It seems likely that many of those moderate Republican voters so loathe Trump that they may sit out the election or shift to Biden."
He continued: "Biden has a big challenge as well, but the dynamic may favor him. He faces dissatisfaction from both moderate Jews and Gen Z university students, with widely divergent views on Israel and Gaza. He also needs to persuade American voters that he has the economy on the right track, even though inflation has hit low-income demographics hard."
To win support, he said Biden should focus on certain issues including "women's reproductive rights" to differentiate himself from Trump.
He continued: "If Biden is to win, he will need to spend the months that remain sharpening contrasts with Trump on political democracy, women's reproductive rights, and other issues that rouse his base and remind undecideds of what is at stake."
Meanwhile, Thomas Whalen, an associate professor who teaches U.S. politics at Boston University, told Newsweek that Trump will suffer more than Biden if people vote against him in primaries.
He said: "To many voters choosing between Biden and Trump is like figuring out if you want COVID or bubonic plague. Yet the Orange Jesus has the most to fear here. His cult-like base in the GOP is smaller than Biden's to begin with. He can't afford to have any of them peal away to a candidate like RFK Jr. who professes similar hard right views and has nicer hair to boot. File under A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall."
The primary season will conclude in July for the Republican Party and August for the Democratic Party.
Then, Biden and Trump will face each other on November 5 in a rematch of the 2020 election.
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