Binkley got 527 votes in last week's South Carolina primary. An additional 4,500 South Carolina Republicans "voted for candidates not named Donald Trump or Nikki Haley."
"That means 5,000 people took the time to go to the polls for a relatively meaningless primary, when they didn't have to, and pull the lever for someone who either wasn't running anymore, or of whom they had never heard."
Who are these voters?
Mulvaney says they are "die-hard Republicans who considered it their civic duty to vote, but didn't think that either Donald Trump or Nikki Haley were up to the job."
And that's a problem for Trump.
"Because while 1 percent of the vote in South Carolina won't change an outcome, the loss of 1 percentage point from Trump's Republican base in Michigan or Georgia or Arizona could cost him the White House."
President Biden has his own problem with protest voters in the primaries. But Mulvaney predicts that those progressive voters will ultimately come home the Biden, if only to vote against Trump.
Trump's challenge is something else entirely.
"One does not go stand in line to vote for Ryan Binkley in Michigan, or Asa Hutchinson in Florida, or Johnny Castro in Arizona, and then pull the lever for Trump in November," he writes.
"And in an election that is shaping up to be at least as tight as 2016 and 2020, even small numbers could make a big difference."
Read the op-ed at TheHill.com.
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