Nikki Haley will continue bid for GOP nom after New Hampshire loss
Donald Trump won the New Hampshire GOP primary, and Biden won in the Democratic primary with a write-in campaign. Candidates now have their sights set on South Carolina.
CHARLESTON, S.C. — Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley may face an uphill battle and lukewarm reception from conservative voters in her home state.
The former South Carolina governor is hoping a strong showing in the Palmetto State after a second-place New Hampshire primary finish can help supercharge her two-way race against the frontrunner, former President Donald Trump. Haley was a popular governor when she led the state from 2011 to 2017, but now, even people who supported her then seemed tepid about her candidacy.
‘Fertile ground’: Can Super Tuesday save Nikki Haley’s bid to compete with Donald Trump?
While the primary election is still weeks away, voters hitting the polls on Feb. 24 may already have their minds made up — and not in Haley’s favor.
“She isn’t widespread hated by South Carolina,” said Meagan Ingersoll, who serves on the board for Young Greenville, a Republican club in the state’s northwest region.
“But I think that almost the apathy towards her perhaps hurts her too,” Ingersoll, 31, added. “People aren’t going to be like, ‘Yeah, Nikki Haley!’ Whereas people feel that way about Trump.”
Trump leads Haley nationally and at home
Trump has dominated the field of Republican White House hopefuls for months, polling double digits above Haley, and other candidates who have since dropped out of the race.
In an early January poll by Emerson College, Trump garnered 54% of South Carolinians’ votes. A month and several candidate exits later, the former president is up to 58%, 26 points above his remaining challenger, Haley, in a Washington Post-Monmouth University poll published Wednesday.
His resounding wins in Iowa and New Hampshire have helped cement Trump’s frontrunner status and raised questions about Haley’s future in the election.
Trump has also secured the majority of GOP endorsements from Haley’s home state, including South Carolina’s Gov. Henry McMaster and Sen. Tim Scott — who ran his own 2024 presidential campaign against Trump before dropping out in November.
Haley, nevertheless, has said the competition is “far from over” for her, triggering Trump’s apparent outrage at his former UN ambassador refusing to drop out.
But in South Carolina — a state with a near-perfect track record of picking Republican presidential nominees going back to 1980 — the Trump fervor is just as strong, said Gibbs Knotts, a political science professor and dean of humanities and social sciences at the College of Charleston.
And while Haley’s crowds and support in South Carolina would be impressive, Knotts said, by “pre-Trump” standards, the popular former president has changed party and primary dynamics.
“The base of the party right now is just so firmly in Trump’s corner, that’s what makes it such an uphill battle for her,” Knotts said.
Charleston resident Kelly Wade, 37, has lived in South Carolina her entire life, including during Haley’s six years in the governor’s mansion. An independent, Wade said she plans to vote for her former governor in the upcoming primary. But she isn’t optimistic about the outcome.
“Honestly, I don’t think it’s going to be great. I feel like if there’s a state she could win, it would be our state, but I just think the people who are diehard for Trump, they’re going to carry him all the way to the end,” Wade said.
Prep for the polls: See who is running for president and compare where they stand on key issues in our Voter Guide
‘Dominate the moderates’: Haley’s potential path to victory
Where Haley may succeed compared to Trump is with moderate and independent voters.
A CNN exit poll in New Hampshire found that about 70% of residents who voted for Haley were not registered Republicans.
This demographic could help her fare better in South Carolina’s more suburban areas, Knotts said, including neighborhoods around Charleston or Greenville.
“If she can win a few conservatives, then just dominate the moderates (in South Carolina), I think she can do better than New Hampshire,” Knotts said. “But the question is, can she actually pull off the victory?”
While Haley’s more mild-mannered nature compared to Trump could win her some independents, it may also lose her more hardline Republicans in the state.
“People in South Carolina view her more as moderate,” Ingersoll said. “Not like moderate as in the true sense of the word, but I don’t think they view her as a conservative fighter.”
Ingersoll, whose pick for president in 2024 was Trump even before other candidates began leaving the race, said some South Carolinians like herself may still have “a sour taste” from Haley’s time as governor.
“Nikki Haley, when she was in an executive role in our state, really kind of seemed to be influenced by power players,” Ingersoll said. “Whereas, that was the opposite for Trump. He was the power player, and people moved because he said so.”
“I think that is what she’s going to find when she comes back to South Carolina,” she added. “People are, I think, they’re going to vote for Trump. I don’t think that they’re going to be swayed from that.”