There's two main factors here.

More moderate = wins more anti-Trump conservative/moderates

Less radical = doesn't necessarily win low propensity voters/Trump fans who might vote Dem downballot.

Also gender/race could matter.

There's many possible scenarios of how she could've been the nominee. Pick which ever makes it the fairest comparison to the Trump/Harris election.

1. Trump never runs (because of legal issues or age)

2. Haley wins the primary somehow (Iowa is more like 40/40/20 instead of 60/20/20, then she wins NH, SC, etc.)

3. Trump assassinated before RNC

Then say Biden drops out in a similar fashion.

The point of the poll is to gauge whether Haley was more or less electable than Trump given that Trump won by a solid margin of 1.5% when forecasters expected Harris to win by 1-2%.

What explains that ~3% error? Is it unique to Trump (his anti-immigrant rhetoric + McDonald's, garbage, podcasts, incumbency, RFK + Tulsi endorsements, etc.)

or was it a latent fact about the Americans perceptions about the Biden/Harris admin that only was uncovered on Nov 5?

How would that change if Haley was the Republican nominee?

It seems likely she would've polled better and perhaps forecasters would have given Haley a 75-80% chance of winning compared to Trump's 50-60%.

But would that diffence have been actualized or been a mirage come election day.

So the question I'm asking is simple (Haley more electable than Trump?), but answering it is difficult since you need to understand the American electorate.

For example, would Dearborn, Michigan (and pro-Palestinian people in general) have more Harris voters than Haley since Haley would've campaigned as clearly Pro-Israel whereas Trump codes as a wildcard?