Biden-Trump rematch edges ever closer as Haley pulls out of presidential race

Semafor Signals

Insights from The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, the Financial Times, and Semafor

The News

Nikki Haley exited the Republican presidential race on Wednesday after losing all but one state primary on Super Tuesday to the party’s frontrunner, former President Donald Trump.

“I am filled with gratitude for the outpouring of support we’ve received from all across our great country. But the time has now come to suspend my campaign,” she said. “It is now up to Donald Trump to earn the votes of those in our party and beyond it who did not support him and I hope he does that.”

Her decision makes a rematch between Trump and U.S. President Joe Biden all but certain in November’s election.

At Tuesday’s state primaries, Haley was only able to fend off Trump in Vermont — the state where she had announced her bid for the nomination last year, becoming the first major challenger to Trump’s campaign.

SIGNALS

Voters more excited by Trump than Biden

Both Biden and Trump have easily won their primary votes, and Biden faces no real challenger as the Democratic candidate. But polls have shown that Democrats are widely unhappy with his leadership so far, with 47% of voters strongly disapproving of his time as president, The New York Times reported. Trump has managed to unite his party, the paper noted, while Democrats are divided over the incumbent’s return to the White House. Just 23% of Democrats say that they’re excited about the prospect of voting for Biden, compared to 48% of Republicans who expressed enthusiasm for Trump. “For now, though, unhappiness with the state of the country is plainly a drag on Mr. Biden’s prospects,” the Times noted. “Two-thirds of the country feels the nation is headed in the wrong direction — and Mr. Trump is winning 63 percent of those voters.”

Trump is underperforming pollsters’ expectations

In 2016, Trump was expected to perform worse than he did on Election Day — suggesting that pollsters massively undercounted his supporters, and that “secret Trump voters” turned out, the Financial Times’ Peter Spiegel wrote. This time around, the opposite seems to be true: Trump isn’t performing as well as expected, meaning pollsters are overcounting the number of people who are keen for his return to the White House. Non-Trump voters “seem to congregate in prosperous suburbs that have traditionally been prime hunting grounds for Republican candidates,” he noted. “But Trump’s erratic behaviour and contempt for democratic norms have produced a notable shift in suburban voting patterns.” There now seems to be, he wrote, “a ‘secret non-Trump voter’ wandering the countryside.”

Haley ‘underestimated’ her opponent

Haley’s campaign hedged on the idea that she had supported Trump in the past, but that his time as the Republican candidate should come to an end. She argued that Trump’s myriad legal woes were a distraction — but that only got her so far, Semafor’s David Weigel and Shelby Talcott wrote Wednesday. “The strategy had limits, both electorally and logically. Simply put, she underestimated Trump,” they said. “It all helped her win protest votes from Democrats, and impressed donors, but the Republican base had moved on before the primaries began.”