If things stand where they stand today, Nikki Haley will go down to a big double-digit loss in her home state of South Carolina.
The first poll out since Trump’s 11-point victory in New Hampshire shows a wider race in the Palmetto State, a scenario most analysts predicted.
As reported by the New York Post, Trump is sitting 27 points ahead according to new numbers from American Promise:
Former President Donald Trump is on course for another double-digit win over 2024 rival Nikki Haley — this time in her home state of South Carolina, according to a new poll.
Trump, 77, enjoys 58% support among likely voters in the Feb. 24 Palmetto State GOP primary, per the survey by the American Promise and the Tyson Group.
Haley, 52, had 31% backing while 11% said they were unsure about whom to support.
Trump led Haley among all political and age groups sampled — except for self-declared Democrats, 49% of whom said they supported Haley and just 5% of whom said they backed the former president.
More than two-thirds of respondents (68%) said they held favorable views of Trump, with 44% saying those views were “strongly favorable.”
By contrast, only 56% said they had favorable opinions of Haley, with just 23% saying their views of her were “strongly favorable.”
Imagine that. Self-declared Democrats in the poll supported Haley overwhelmingly. That’s only important from an informational perspective since it’s clear Trump is the only remaining candidate on the ballot appealing to the grassroots Republican base.
Haley appeals to Democrats and left-leaning moderates, a lane that was occupied by former Ohio Governor John Kasich in 2016. It was Kasich, along with Ted Cruz, as one of the remaining candidates after the field winnowed. The rest is history, of course, Kasich went down in flames but the moderate lane is wide enough to keep driving in for a short while.
Expectations, directly from Haley herself, are already being lowed, according to CNN:
“I don’t think it necessarily has to be a win, but it certainly has to be better than what I did in New Hampshire, and it certainly has to be close. … If we win – great. If not, we need to narrow it along the way to give people in Super Tuesday states a reason to see and have us fight on,” she said on NBC’s Meet the Press.
If she’s sticking in until the South Carolina primary on February 24, that’s only a few days away from sticking with it until Super Tuesday on March 5. At this point it seems likely she might hang out for a while if not merely to pick up a few delegates here and there.
She’s not going to be the nominee, she already knows that. The plan, at this point, has to be delegate-related. There’s still some chance that something will happen between now and the convention that derails Trump. It won’t be Nikki Haley in the primary, but a legal issue or health reason is possible. By Haley’s logic, she’ll be the next in line with the second-most delegates. That scenario itself is far-fetched as someone like DeSantis would more likely unite factions of the GOP than left-leaning Nikki Haley.
Politico did some back-of-the-napkin delegate math and points out that unless Haley starts winning the next few contests, she’s done. The delegate door will close by March and Trump will be the presumptive nominee:
Within four weeks after Haley faces former President Donald Trump in her home state, more than 70 percent of the delegates to the Republican convention in July will have been awarded.
That sudden acceleration could be whiplash-inducing for Haley, who already faces an unfriendly electorate in the upcoming states. The former South Carolina governor has been able to mount a challenge to Trump by investing significant time and money into individual states. And now she faces a primary calendar that requires a totally different approach.
It’s a structural problem, in addition to Haley’s political one: trying to turn out the moderates and independents who boosted her in New Hampshire in states where they are in shorter supply. The door is still technically open for her to dethrone the former president despite his victories in the first two states, but it’s going to close very quickly.
Politico is being generous. The door is closed unless every upcoming state looks like New Hampshire, which it doesn’t.
Even then, Haley lost New Hampshire in the best-case scenario of a high number of crossover and undeclared voters. There’s no “winning” by not winning. That’s a facade candidates use to soothe their egos.
In between now and South Carolina, there’s Nevada, a weird situation that Trump is expected to dominate.
For Haley, it’s her home state or bust, and the bust pretty much already happened.
