President Trump resoundingly defeated Nikki Haley in the South Carolina primary on Saturday. Like clockwork, Haley, alongside the nation’s left-leaning media, began to crow that “40% of Republicans” didn’t pick Donald Trump, however. The claim is based on Haley’s vote share of 39.5 percent. But a look under the hood of the claim reveals it to be an outright farce.

Last night, 40 percent of Republicans voted against Trump.

— Adam Kinzinger (Slava Ukraini) 🇺🇸🇺🇦🇮🇱 (@AdamKinzinger) February 25, 2024

OPEN PRIMARY.

South Carolina is an open primary, and for the past several months, Haley and her supporters on the political left have openly targeted Democrats and other non-Republicans to vote for her in the race. There is vast evidence of this, not least the Associated Press VoteCast’s data from Saturday night.

“Haley dominated among South Carolina voters who… said that Democrat Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election. Roughly three-quarters of her supporters say Biden was legitimately elected president in 2020, and about 4 in 10 voted for Biden in that election,” the AP reports.

POLITICO also admits: “A majority of every age demographic picked Trump over Haley. Men and women both backed Trump. Voters across all income ranges backed him, and he only narrowly lost college graduates while dominating among those without a college degree.”

‘WE ONLY CARE ABOUT DAMAGING TRUMP’.

So it’s already clear that much of Haley’s 39.5 percent did not solely come from Republicans disaffected by Trump. Some folks have already done the fast math.

Institutionally, Haley’s overt efforts in turning out Democrats to “damage” Trump were aided by groups like Primary Pivot – an organization staffed by ‘Never Trump Inc’ operatives from groups like the Lincoln Project, and conceived by an Obama-era USAID operative called Kenneth Schleffler.

.@Primary_Pivot sent 200k+ texts to South Carolinians who voted in the 2020 Dem primary today, urging recipients to sit out the Democratic primary tomorrow and vote for Nikki Haley in the GOP primary instead.

Here’s the two different messages they sent out today: pic.twitter.com/NEd4FcsC1X

— Dylan Wells (@dylanewells) February 3, 2024

On the run-up to the primary, the entity was described by the anti-Trump Dispatch website as “target[ing] Democratic voters who did not vote in their party’s presidential primary… urg[ing] them to vote for Haley. The group has purchased ad time on radio stations in the Charleston, Columbia, and Greenville markets geared toward black audiences.”

The efforts were hyped by ABC News, Fox, the Hill, the State, and POLITICO.

“Robert Schwartz, the co-founder of PrimaryPivot, told The Dispatch… that the super PAC, together with its nonprofit arm PrimaryPower, raised about $700,000 before the New Hampshire primary and expects to have an additional $300,000 to $400,000 to spend on its efforts in South Carolina, Michigan, multiple Super Tuesday states, and Georgia. The group has not disclosed its donors.”