Students who cast their ballot for Republican nominee and former President Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election said they laud his stances on immigration and economic policy but favored younger candidates in the party’s presidential primaries.
Ten Republican students said they’re voting to reelect Trump due to his plans to curb inflation by cutting taxes and expanding tariffs and reduce illegal immigration by increasing security at the Mexican border. Half of the students said they initially supported Republican candidates for president, like former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, but rallied around Trump when the GOP declared him the party’s nominee in July.
Sophomore Parker Malphrus, a contributing member of the GW College Republicans’ Political Affairs Committee from South Carolina, said he’s voting for Trump this election because he believes the former president will help the country return to a more stable economy after three years of rising inflation.
The U.S. inflation rate sat at 2.4 percent in September, the most recent available data, after settling from a peak of 9.1 percent in 2022. The economy ranks as the most important issue that registered voters said would influence their vote for the president, according to a Gallup poll last month.
“It comes down to the economy and who’s best for my interest,” Malphrus said.
Malphrus said in the primaries, he initially voted for Haley, who is 52, because he hoped the party would back a younger candidate than Trump, who is 78. Hailing from South Carolina, Malphrus said he appreciated Haley’s track record on election integrity and business, referencing how she signed a law as governor that required voters to present one of five forms of photo ID to vote, and brought jobs from large manufacturers like Boeing and BMW to the state. He said he nonetheless plans to support Trump because he received the Republican nomination.
“It seems like Donald Trump is the best fitted to advance this American Dream for young people that I think is fading away,” Malphrus said.
Sophomore Kieran Laffey, a GWCRs co-chair from New York, said he’s voting for Trump because he feels the economy was stronger four years ago under his administration, citing increasing inflation since 2021 that has raised the price of groceries and housing.
He said he trusts Trump more than Vice President Kamala Harris to lower costs because she broke the Senate tie on spending bills like the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022, which he said didn’t resolve inflation. Economists have said the bill didn’t contribute to the cooling in inflation since 2022 because many of its measures weren’t implemented until after inflation fell from 9.1 to 3.2 percent.
“We have four years of a presidential term really put up against four years of another administration, the Biden-Harris administration,” Laffey said. “If you look at really all the pillars of the administration, starting with the economy, the facts are we were just better off under Donald Trump.”
In the 2016 and 2020 presidential election cycles, Republican students were divided over the decision to elect Trump as president, with some claiming he had a “polarizing” effect on the party and others comparing him to a school bully. Division among Republican students in reelecting Trump in 2020 reflected a national trend marked by the emergence of anti-Trump Republican groups like Never Trump and the Lincoln Project.
The trend continues this year with Republicans like former Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney endorsing Harris and former Trump Chief of Staff John Kelly calling him a “fascist.” But Laffey said Harris endorsements from high-ranking Republicans don’t sway his vote because the same Democrats who are touting such endorsements were once critical of GOP politicians when their interests didn’t align.
“I don’t think it moves the needle at all,” Laffey said. “Liz Cheney got 27 percent in the Republican primary, extremely unpopular in our party, so I don’t think it really changes anything.”
Junior Christina Carris, a student from Illinois and the public relations director of GWCRs, was the former president of Students for Haley at GW before Trump won the Republican primary. She said Haley’s rhetoric appeals to moderate and undecided voters more than Trump’s, which would have allowed her to court “soft Democrats.”
“I do believe if she was the nominee, the Republicans wouldn’t be as worried as they are about this election,” Carris said.
Carris said she disapproved of Trump’s delay in condemning the riots on Jan. 6, 2021 — when a crowd of his supporters stormed the Capitol in an attempt to subvert the 2020 presidential election certification — but still intends to support him in the upcoming election because she supports his “strict” border policies.
Carris said drugs coming in from across the Mexican border exacerbates the U.S.’s fentanyl crisis. She added that Chicago, Illinois, her hometown, has one of the largest sex trafficking rings and claimed that “a lot of that” came from across the U.S.-Mexico border.
Border patrol arrested more than 15,000 migrants with criminal convictions trying to cross the border last fiscal year, accounting for less than 1 percent of the more than 2.4 million migrants recorded as border encounters that year. An Axios poll reported in April that more than half of all Americans believe that illegal immigration is linked to heightened crime.
She said Trump showed courage when he survived an attempted assassination at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July, which prompted voters to perceive him more positively. Trump’s favorability rose from about 30 to 40 percent following the July assassination attempt, according to an ABC/Ipsos poll that month.
“I was not a fan of what happened on January 6 to say the least, but I will say, the assassination attempts humanized Trump for a lot of voters,” Carris said.
Senior Bryant Li, a member of the GWCRs communications committee, said he doesn’t have U.S. citizenship and therefore cannot vote in elections, but he would have preferred entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy — a contender in the Republican primaries — over Trump as the GOP nominee because he doesn’t support sending arms to conflicts abroad.
Ramaswamy said he planned to broker a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine. He pushed back on sending American aid to Ukraine, a position Trump also holds, as well as Israel.
“I feel he’s very intelligent, probably the most intelligent amongst those candidates, frankly, and he was very different and unique compared to the candidates, especially in topics like Critical Race Theory and foreign policy,” Li said.
Li said he supports Trump over Harris because he has a more “hawkish” approach to foreign policy that could allow him to bring peace back between Russia and Ukraine and Israel and Hamas. He said he doesn’t believe Harris could negotiate peace deals because he thinks she will take a less aggressive approach, pointing to Harris not condemning the Israeli military’s killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in October.
“During the Trump presidency, if I remember correctly, from 2017 to 2020, in general, the world was quite peaceful,” Li said.
Junior Victoria Carlson, the GWCRs chair from New Jersey, said she is voting for Trump, but she is more focused on fostering open dialogue within her organization with those who didn’t support him at first. Carlson said she and other GWCRs members consolidated support around Trump after he secured the Republican nomination, which was “the right way” compared to Harris, who secured the Democratic nomination without running in the primary.
“We had the primary for a reason. We had other candidates. I think whoever we chose democratically is the right nominee,” Carlson said.
