1 in 5 Florida Republicans just voted against Trump. Should he be worried?

Paul Nelson is no Donald Trump Republican. At his polling place for Florida’s presidential preference primary Tuesday, the 64-year-old from St. Petersburg called the former president “narcissistic” and “dangerous to our democracy.”

So the registered Republican cast a protest vote for a candidate who had already exited the race: Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley.

Nelson was part of a small minority. Trump snagged 81% of the GOP Florida electorate Tuesday — a week after he’d already clinched the Republican nomination for president. (Florida has closed primaries, meaning only Republicans could vote in Tuesday’s presidential contest.) The former president is the early favorite to defeat President Joe Biden in November in what has become a more reliably red state.

At the same time, however, nearly 1 in 5 Republican primary votes in Florida — more than 200,000 in all — went to someone no longer actively running. For a former president who routinely scored approval ratings above 90% among GOPers when he was in office — and who got nearly 94% of Florida’s primary vote as an incumbent in 2020 — the anti-Trump vote could be indicative of a fractured party.

And in a close election, where swing states can be decided by razor-thin margins, that could make a real difference.

“I’d be a little concerned if I were Trump,” said Brad Coker, the managing director at the Florida firm Mason-Dixon Polling and Strategy.

Centrists feeling left out

What does Trump have to do to win over the skeptical members of his own party?

Nicole Mossbacher of Clearwater is one such Republican. And she isn’t sure.

In years past, she’s supported candidates ranging from Republican John Kasich to Democrats Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg. She’s dreading the choice she’s been left with in 2024: Biden or Trump.

“I cannot believe we’re in a situation where we’re having to choose between two candidates, none of which I like, both of which are octogenarians,” said Mossbacher, who voted for Haley by mail before she ended her campaign. “I still don’t know who I’m going to vote for in the general election.”

Mossbacher voted in Pinellas, often a bellwether in presidential contests. Trump lost it by less than a percentage point in 2020. It proved to be Trump’s second-worst county on Tuesday.

Tuesday didn’t tell the entire story about the Republican electorate. For example, not every vote for Haley was a pure act of protest; she was still in the race when mail-in ballots went out in February. And the presence of DeSantis on the ballot likely ate into Trump’s margins; many of those voters could be expected to vote for Trump over Biden in November.

Matthew Shelter, the co-founder of Boston-based Beacon Research, said that the anti-Trump primary vote shouldn’t worry the former president. Skeptical Republicans were never a part of his competitive 2016 and 2020 coalitions, and he doesn’t need them to win in 2024.

“They’re not a group that he’s going to win back or needs to win back,” Shelter said.

The way Shelter sees it, Trump’s coalition of supporters is fairly solid. He’s got a low ceiling of popular support, but a high floor as well. Everybody’s got an opinion on Trump, and it’s not likely to change.

Trump seems to know this. When former Vice President Mike Pence told CBS’ “Face the Nation” last week that he “cannot in good conscience” support his former running mate, Trump responded by saying it didn’t matter.

“I couldn’t care less,” Trump told reporters after voting in Palm Beach County. “We need patriots. We need strong people in our country. Our country’s going downhill very fast, very rapidly.”

Bud Risser of St. Petersburg, who donated to former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie but did not vote in Tuesday’s primary because he is a registered Democrat, said he hasn’t heard anything from Trump that would suggest the former president is trying to win over centrists like himself. (Risser said he switches his registration between Republican and Democrat regularly.)

“It’s degraded down to a place where I don’t see any way out,” said Risser, 82, who has misgivings about Biden, but says he won’t vote for Trump in the general. “It’s still a binary world.”

Kimball Adams of Largo also struggles to imagine what Trump — or Biden, for that matter — could do to sway him in either direction. Adams said he was unaffiliated before changing his status to Republican so he could cast a ballot Tuesday. He donated to both Christie and Sen. Tim Scott before they ended their campaigns, then switched to Haley, whom he called “my last, best hope for something different.”

“I know I wasted my vote — but I don’t think so, because I sent a message,” said Adams, 69.

He wants to hear how Trump and Biden plan to unite the country and avoid fanning the flames of partisanship further. How they respond could decide the election, Adams said.

“Ten thousand people switch their vote, and that switches the whole result of the election,” he said. “Who’s going to bring us together?”

For some, begrudging support for Trump

Just as Trump may have work left to win over moderates and independents, a lot can happen before November that could cost him their vote.

A Politico/Ipsos poll this month found that more than a third of independent voters would be less likely to support Trump were he to be convicted on charges related to business fraud in New York, or to efforts to undermine the 2020 election in Georgia. A February NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll found that while Trump and Biden were running close to even, Biden would open a wider lead if Trump were convicted of a crime. In such a case, nearly 1 in 10 Republicans said they’d vote for Biden.

That hesitancy was on display even among those who voted for Trump on Tuesday in Tampa Bay.

At the Polish Center in Clearwater, Karen Wohlers said she wanted to see DeSantis as president, but conceded that he didn’t have a chance against Trump. Still, the criminal cases hanging over Trump concern her.

“He’s got so much going on,” she said.

And his involvement in the Jan. 6 insurrection was also troubling, she said.

“I still don’t believe he incited it, but I don’t know,” she said.

The economy still drove Wohlers to put aside her reservations.

“The spending, oh my God,” she said. “(Biden) is spending so much money and it’s coming from us.”

Clearwater resident Tina Peters, 60, thought the economy and country were much better off under Trump. She didn’t approve of everything Trump has said or done, but still saw him as the best candidate.

“Did I agree with every last word that came out of the man’s mouth? No,” she said. “But I don’t always agree with my husband, either.”

Carren Hudson, 81, also said she wished Trump “could keep his mouth shut.” But she saw nothing he could do that would turn her against him.

“Unless he shot somebody,” Hudson said with a laugh.

For some, even that wouldn’t be enough.

Bernie Pella, a registered Republican who calls himself a “constitutionalist,” said he believes Trump won in 2020, and worried this year’s election will be rigged. After voting for Trump at First Baptist Church of St. Petersburg, he said he doesn’t see a way Trump will lose his vote by November.

“If he were to die, he would lose my vote,” Pella, 66, said.

Times staff writers Justin Garcia, Tracey McManus and Jack Prator contributed to this report.