In the 12-ish hours since the 2024 Indiana Primary wrapped up, I’ve been really digging into the results (as always!) and of course, one of the most interesting races was the GOP primary for Governor. But equally as interesting was the GOP race for President, where in spite of Nikki Haley being out of the race for months, she still cracked 22% of the vote statewide.
Well, when tracking the data in 2,527 precincts it became extremely obvious that her voters had a huge preference for certain candidates in the Governor’s race, as did Trump’s. It is very rare to find such a strong correlation in a primary like this, but Nikki Haley’s support was EXTREMELY predictive (a 67% correlation) to Brad Chambers’ support. In fact, there are about 75 precincts around the state that they both won, some by landslides (almost all of which are on the northside of Indy) which are clear on the top right section of the correlation graph. For both candidates, Marion County (Indianapolis) was their best county in the state, with Chambers winning it outright as his only county win.
One other interesting thing that many people seemed to doubt was how clear Trump’s support would come through for Braun, but it did big time, with a similarly strong -0.60% correlation. That is HIGHLY predictive and shows how valuable Trump’s endorsement of Braun was.
Perhaps the most surprising is that the two furthest right-wing candidates, Curtis Hill and Jamie Reitenour, barely even had a correlation of support with Trump, and also Eric Doden, whereas Suzanne Crouch’s correlation was also modest, but more dependent on the anti-Trump coalition. That wasn’t a shock but some people may have expected more Nikki Haley voters to side with her.
Regardless, there are a lot of interesting takeaways from this data… I will have more analysis to come!