“We know what (Trump) has done and what he has promised to do, and his revenge and his rhetoric. … (Harris) is unknown, unproven, all that, but if she gets good people in there with her, she could be very good and very strong,” Coffey said in an interview. “The known of Trump scares me more than the unknown of Harris.”

Connor, for his part, said he’s not looking forward to voting for “Quick Draw McGraw—a nasty-minded, orange-skinned man” — aka Trump. But, he said, “I go back to look at what life was like during his four years and where we were on the world stage as the United States of America, as a superpower.”

Divergent choices by The pair of one-time Haley supporters point to the complicated and imperfect options available to Republican voters disillusioned by Trump, particularly in states where the outcome of the election is not guaranteed. It also illustrates the profound gender gap in general electorate and Haley’s pool of voters, which have become a key voting bloc as Trump and Harris head into tight elections.

While purple New Hampshire is looking more and more certain for Harris, Haley voters could be a critical constituency in other, closer states. That’s because in many swing state primaries, Haley’s vote totals exceeded the margin of victory in the 2020 election. Craig Synder, national and Pennsylvania director of the external spending effort Haley Voters for Harrishe noted Polls show that Harris performs better among Republicans than past Democratic nomineesand hope that Harris could eventually win over more than half of those who supported Haley in the primary. Among Haley voters, women and suburbanites are more likely to support Harris, Snyder said, while male voters and those in urban or rural areas lean more toward Trump.

“Our voters may not agree (Harris) about everything, but they’re not worlds apart,” Snyder said in an interview. “We think this is a game that can be played between the 40-yard lines.”

And yet, voters like Connor prove that Trump is still big for many in the GOP.

In January, the Globe profiled three undecided Republican voters in New Hampshire like them they made their decisions about who to support in the state’s first mayor in the country. All three — Connor, a truck driver who owns his own business; Coffey, a retiree who spent most of her life in Texas; and James Thibault, a college student preparing to cast his first vote — were hesitant to vote for Trump at the time, either because they questioned his character or because they feared that his unflappable tone and controversial record it will cause others to reject it. Thibault ultimately endorsed Trump in the primary, and Connor is now doing the same, developments that illustrate the magnetic influence Trump has on his party, even among voters who consider it problematic.

Connor, who voted for Trump in the past but initially did not want to support him this cycle, blasted the former president as “selfish” and said he feared a Trump re-election would bring more division and chaos. When Haley dropped out of the race, leaving the country facing a Trump-Biden rematch, Connor was deeply disappointed.

“‘Oh, here we go again, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, like, oh my God,'” Connor remembers thinking. “I was scared to death for the country.”

Months later, when President Biden left the race, Connor didn’t like how easy Harris had made it seem inherits the nomination; he likened her to a spoiled child who was handed the family business. Nor was Connor thrilled with her domestic policy platform, which she indicated would closely mirror Biden’s.

“We know what life was like under Trump, right, and all his mean tweets and the price of food and what the world economy was like,” Connor said. “But we also know what life was like under Biden, right? And if Harris has claimed that she’s basically just going to run the Biden economy, maybe with a slight twist to her own thought process, then I don’t see how we’re going to gain anything as a nation.”

Looking for an alternative, Connor was drawn to the independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. But by August, Kennedy dropped out of the race and endorsed Trump.

Connor felt Trump gained credibility from some of the big names who endorsed him, including Kennedy and former Democratic congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard.

Kennedy and Gabbard “got a chance to look behind the curtain,” Connor recalls thinking, as he relished the idea of ​​voting for Trump. “You have these people who know more about politics in all of this than I do, and they seem to be going in that direction.”

Connor’s younger child, a sophomore in college, is gender neutral at a time when The GOP has targeted anyone who doesn’t fit neatly into a gender binary. Connor said he wishes politicians would be more tolerant.

“There’s still a lot of things (Trump) does and a lot of things he says that I’m not a fan of,” Connor said.

But ultimately, he sees Trump as the better option. “I go back to look at what life was like during his four years and where we were on the world stage as the United States of America as a superpower.”

For Coffey, voting for Trump was never an option. In 2016, when she and her husband were still living in Amarillo, in the deep red Texas Panhandle, she listened to Trump’s “nasty” rhetoric and decided she would never vote for him. She has kept that up, endorsing Democrats in 2016 and 2020, although she deviates from the party on major issues. Character is the most important qualification, she said.

“I am almost 71 years old. I’ve been voting since I was 18,” Coffey said. “I’m familiar with the situation where I don’t always agree with someone, but I look at the whole package.”

Coffey would have voted for Biden, but was happy when he dropped out of the race. As she watched him debate Trump in June, in the televised event that would ultimately sink the president’s re-election bid, she remembers thinking, “Oh, my heavens … oh, no.”

It reminded him of watching over his elderly in-laws. “Somebody needs to get the car keys,” she said.

When Harris became the nominee, Coffey felt energized: “OK, we can make this somewhat competitive. And he certainly did.”

Coffey still wishes Haley, or former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, had won the Republican nomination this year. However, given her options now, it was clear to Coffey that Harris was the only choice.

The Democratic campaign has placed a heavy emphasis on recruiting Republicans, promoting the endorsement of prominent names such as Liz Cheney. Coffey has noticed a handful of “Republicans for Harris” signs popping up in her Peterborough neighborhood.

“It had to be somebody bad on the Democratic side to change me,” Coffey said. “She may not be the best of the Democratic candidates that could have been out there, but she’s still better than Trump.”

Emma Platoff can be reached at [email protected]. Follow a @emmaplatoff.