For Republicans still hoping to stop former President Donald Trump in his quest for a third consecutive Republican nomination, the stars appeared, for a short time, to have aligned in South Carolina.
Two-time governor Nikki Haley just had to win in her home state, in a one-on-one matchup that allowed independents and even Democrats to vote. World events and Trump himself seemed determined to make Haley’s task easier, and the former U.N. ambassador was able to promote herself as a rational voice for a new generation even as Trump highlighted her own political and legal responsibilities.
But that dream scenario turned into a nightmare on Saturday for Haley and those who wanted her to win. She was crushed by the results of the South Carolina primary, and the slim hopes of stopping Trump on his march to his party’s nomination all but evaporated in the wake of the defeat and the brutal calculations that await Haley in the Super Tuesday and beyond.
Haley’s somber congratulations to Trump late Saturday were met with boos at his election watch party. She hinted at her disappointment at not having a stronger finish, but said her campaign would continue to give more voters a chance to have their say.
“I know that 40% is not 50%. But I also know that 40% is not a small group,” Haley said, drawing a line in the sand as the vote count continued (which later showed her total had fallen to the 30s). ).
“We need to beat Joe Biden in November,” he said. “I don’t think Donald Trump can beat Joe Biden.”
Unlike his previous big wins in Iowa and New Hampshire, Trump didn’t even mention Haley in his own comments Saturday night. He spoke briefly about the upcoming Michigan primary and touched on general election issues that he hopes to use as a weapon against President Biden this fall.
“It was an even bigger victory than we expected,” the former president said. “I’ve never seen the Republican Party as unified as it is now.”
Republican presidential candidate and former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley speaks on stage at her watch party during the South Carolina Republican presidential primary election in Charleston, South Carolina, on February 24, 2024 .
Brian Snyder/Reuters
Trump’s exaggerations aside, he had a right to brag about these results. He won New Hampshire by only about 11 points after capturing Iowa by more than 30, and as voting data came in from South Carolina, it looked like Haley would finish further back than he did in New Hampshire.
Trump is the first non-incumbent Republican to win all three of the initial big awards in the modern voting era.
Haley’s campaign had repeatedly refused to specify what she needed to accomplish in her home state, but the 538 analysis of delegate math left her needing a sweep of South Carolina’s 50 delegates to have a shot at catching Trump. in the race that determines the nomination.
Instead, it is Trump who could achieve an outright victory, depending on the final results in the state’s congressional districts.
Haley herself had acknowledged that she needed to “close the gap” against Trump.
“I need to show that I’m stronger in South Carolina than I am in New Hampshire,” he said in an interview a few days after the New Hampshire primary last month. “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.”
In the end it doesn’t seem so close, and the voting results and exit polls showed the extent to which Haley’s arguments against Trump failed. He warned loudly that nominating him would hand the election to Biden, but 82% of South Carolina Republican voters said in exit polls that Trump would likely beat Biden this fall, compared to 59% who said Same about Haley.
By wide margins in the exit poll, Republican voters took pro-MAGA stances on deporting unauthorized immigrants and the United States playing a less active role in world affairs. Nearly two-thirds of voters said Trump would be fit to serve as president even if he were convicted of a crime (he denies any wrongdoing); a similar number said they believed the false notion, long pushed without evidence by Trump, that Biden was not legitimately elected president in 2020.
Trump led Republicans, who accounted for about seven in 10 of all voters on Saturday, by a margin of nearly 50 points, according to exit polls. Haley led independents by about 11 points, a margin that is not strong enough to dent Trump’s lead among the Republican core. (While Democrats who did not vote in the Democratic primary earlier this month were able to vote in the Republican primary, self-identified Democrats represented only about 4% of all voters on Saturday.)
Republican presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump takes the stage to speak during an election night watch party at the State Fairgrounds, February 24, 2024, in Columbia, South Carolina.
Win Mcnamee/Getty Images
Haley has said she will campaign until Super Tuesday, when 15 states from coast to coast vote. By the end of that night on March 5, nearly half of the convention delegates selected in the primaries and caucuses to determine the presidential nomination will have been awarded.
But that vast playing field exaggerates Haley’s chances in practice. Because of primary rules and delegate plans, many of them designed by Trump loyalists, Haley’s campaign is only realistically targeting delegates in about half of the Super Tuesday states and has no real path to overcome an advantage that is growing and establishing. It will soon be much bigger.
Delegate-rich California, for example, changed its rules to award all of its delegates to a candidate who wins a state majority, virtually ensuring that Trump will win its 169 delegates. The Trump campaign was proudly behind that change and others like it that make it difficult for a lagging candidate to catch up in the delegate race.
In South Carolina, Haley did win among first-time voters and scored a big victory among those who describe themselves as “moderate,” according to exit polls. But eight in 10 voters described themselves as conservative, and Trump beat them by nearly 50 points.
His big play to change the makeup and inclinations of the electorate didn’t work, even as Trump attacked NATO allies, refused to condemn Russia’s authoritarian President Vladimir Putin, and mockingly questioned why Haley’s husband, who currently deployed overseas, he was “missing.” of the path. Trump led veterans over Haley by 67% to 33% in exit polls.
Eight years ago, Republicans’ failure to unite behind a single alternative to Trump helped him gain traction during the primaries. He won South Carolina in 2016 with less than a third of the total vote, with a half-dozen challengers slicing up the rest and Haley joining Sen. Tim Scott in lining up behind Florida Sen. Marco Rubio’s doomed campaign.
But now, in 2024, Trump’s dominance over the Republican Party is such that the field had narrowed to just three major candidates by the time of the Iowa caucuses, and then to just two people in New Hampshire and South Carolina. .
After Saturday night, however, there is only one candidate with a realistic path to the Republican nomination: Trump, with all his glaring flaws, criminal cases and polarizing language.
Haley has the resources to continue campaigning for the foreseeable future. But she does not have a message or a delegate route that will bring her closer to becoming the presidential candidate.