Is there a Haley-Harris voter pipeline?

Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley admitted defeat on March 6, but in the weeks that followed, that didn’t stop more than 1.3 million Republicans in 21 states from voting for her anyway. Some of them will cast ballots in November for Vice President Kamala Harris.

Craig Snyder, the director of the political action committee Haley Voters for Harris, is one of them.

“I’ve stayed a registered Republican despite being what the press calls a ‘never Trumper’ because I hope that the Republican Party can return to being something much more like what it was when I joined it in the time of Ronald Reagan,” Snyder told WORLD. He is encouraging Republicans to keep President Donald Trump out of the White House for a second term. Now that Vice President Kamala Harris is at the top of the Democratic ticket, Snyder thinks he has a better chance of succeeding.

Even just a few thousand votes in competitive counties could tip the scales of an increasingly competitive contest between Trump and Harris. Even before Harris’ rise, donation data suggested that some moderate Republicans who supported Haley were willing to donate to Democratic candidates. Many of Haley’s top donors haven’t transferred their support to Trump; Among them, Jonathan Kraft, the son of Robert Kraft and president of the NFL’s New England Patriots.

According to Federal Election Commission records, Kraft has contributed to past campaigns for Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz., House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., and Rep. Dan Crenshaw R-Texas, alongside others. His largest donation to a single candidate between 2023 and 2024 was to the Haley presidential campaign. His $13,200 gift in December is among the top five largest individual contributions the campaign received overall.

Since Haley’s departure from the race, that same generosity hasn’t extended to Trump, any of his political action committees, or other MAGA candidates—even though Haley herself endorsed Trump and encouraged her supporters to back him.

Among Haley supporters who made individual donations of $6,600 or more, roughly 1 in 7 of them also had a track record of donating to Democratic candidates, according to records available as of June. That was before Biden dropped out.

Costas Panagopoulos, an expert on campaigns, elections, and voting behaviors from Northeastern University, said he is surprised that the 1-in-7 ratio wasn’t already higher.

“Supporting Haley indicated—at least to some extent—that they were not supportive of Donald Trump, who eclipsed Haley for the nomination.” Panagopoulos said. “That’s clearly an opportunity for the Harris campaign moving forward.” Snyder, the director of Haley Voters for Harris, similarly expects to see an uptick in support for the vice president among some Republicans, especially because of her age.

Snyder formerly worked as chief of staff to Arlen Specter, a 30-year U.S. senator from Pennsylvania who switched parties from Republican to Democrat in 2009. Specter left the Senate in 2011 and died in 2012 at the age of 82. Snyder remembers riding the train into Washington, D.C., with Biden on a handful of occasions during his time in the Senate. He said he felt almost sad to watch Biden’s decline. But almost immediately after Biden announced his decision, Snyder said he felt a shift.

“Voters have been telling pollsters for two years now they didn’t like this choice,” Snyder said, referring to the Biden-Trump rematch. “The No. 1 driver was that the candidates were too old and that it was time for a new generation to step onto the stage, and now we have that.”

But just how many Haley voters would consider voting for Harris—and where are they?

In the primaries, a total of 4.7 million Republicans voted for Haley. She won Vermont and Washington, D.C., and captured at least half as many votes as Trump in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, Colorado, Massachusetts, Utah, and Virginia.

If more Haley voters openly support Harris, Panagopoulos said, the group could take on a life of its own in certain states.

“Politics is a social enterprise that involves social interaction as well as social pressure,” Panagopoulos said. “The realization that you’re not alone in supporting a particular candidate will only reinforce that support and extend it as people realize there are others like them.”

Synder believes how those voters react to Harris in the coming months will depend on how well she communicates her priorities at the Democratic National Convention later this month. The convention runs Aug. 19-22.

“We’re going to let things settle out, and we’re going to continue to do message testing between now and the Democratic convention, and then I think we’ll know for sure at that point,” Snyder said. “Our belief is, at the end of the day, that there will be about a million Haley voters situated in swing states who will have an open mind towards the possibility of voting for Harris.”