SC’s Haley suspends bid for 2024 GOP nomination after Trump wins 23 of first 25 contests

After a poor showing in Republican presidential primaries on Super Tuesday, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley suspended her campaign for the White House.

She effectively ceded the 2024 GOP nomination to former President Donald Trump, who remained the party’s front runner in the race throughout 2023 and into 2024.

The former ambassador to the United Nations also did not plan to endorse Trump in her remarks Wednesday from Charleston. Instead she called on Trump to earn the support of Republicans and independent voters who backed her.

According to polling, Haley had strength among suburban women and independents, both key demographics in winning general elections. Haley often performed better than Trump in hypothetical head-to-head match-ups against President Joe Biden.

“Unity is not achieved by simply claiming ‘we’re united,’” said Haley national spokesperson Olivia Perez-Cubas. “Today, in state after state, there remains a large block of Republican primary voters who are expressing deep concerns about Donald Trump. That is not the unity our party needs for success. Addressing those voters’ concerns will make the Republican Party and America better.”

Haley’s campaign, which launched last February, was the first to kick off after former Trump started almost immediately after the 2022 midterm elections. Her campaign lasted longer than other major candidates who sought the White House. She was the last major candidate remaining trying to loosen Trump’s grip on the Republican Party.

“I think she’s run a good campaign,” said Warren Tompkins, a longtime political strategist in South Carolina. “I think she’s been a good candidate. She is always on message, very disciplined and understands the media and how to work the media.”

“I don’t know at this point how you can say there was anything different you can do because she’s the last person standing. That says something in itself,” Tompkins added.

Haley made the decision to drop out after the Super Tuesday contests. She also had lost contests in the early states of Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina and Michigan.

Haley did not go winless in her run for the GOP presidential nomination. She won the Republican primaries in the District of Columbia and Vermont. However, Trump won the contests in 23 states and territories.

After Super Tuesday, Haley had 89 delegates. Trump had 995, according to the New York Times Delegate Tracker. A candidate needs 1,215 delegates to secure the nomination at the Republican National Convention.

Trump’s margins of victory in the early state contests were not as large as polling predicted. Haley often pointed out that roughly 40% of GOP primary voters and caucus goers in states such as Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina rejected Trump, and didn’t want the former president to have a rematch with Biden.

“I’m an accountant. I know 40% is not 50%. But I also know 40% is not some tiny group,” Haley said on South Carolina primary night. “There are huge numbers of voters in our Republican primaries who are saying they want an alternative.”

In South Carolina and other states, Haley won in areas with higher educational attainment and won support among voters who considered themselves as independent or Democratic voters as she became portrayed as a moderate.

Her vote share in South Carolina was high enough that she carried Beaufort, Charleston and Richland counties in the First in the South primary.

But she still could not catch up to Trump in a one-on-one contest in her home state, marking the first time the twice-elected former governor lost an election in South Carolina.

Haley’s closer than expected margins to Trump encouraged people to keep contributing to her campaign to keep her candidacy alive. In the week leading up to Super Tuesday, she also had been seeing larger crowds as she crisscrossed the country.

For much of last year Haley polled in the single digits, but spent lots of time on the trail in an attempt to lay the groundwork for a surge in polling and support. Besides numerous visits to the traditional early states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, her campaign included a visit to the southern border, an address in front of the Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America offices, and a full-throated defense of Israel both before and after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack.

She was lauded for performances in early debates maximizing her limited speaking times to criticize other candidates such as Trump, U.S. Sen. Tim Scott, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former Vice President Mike Pence of increasing the country’s debt.

Haley had battles with her fellow South Carolinian even though she appointed Scott to the U.S. Senate in late 2012. She also visibly showed disdain for entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy on the debate stage as Ramaswamy brought up previous use of TikTok by Haley’s daughter, Rena Haley Jackson. Haley even called Ramaswamy “scum” for invoking her daughter into debates.

“She was able to use those early debates to kind of break out a bit. None of the candidates were getting a whole lot of attention because the Trump indictments were sucking the oxygen right out of the room,” said Danielle Vinson, a professor of Politics and International Affairs at Furman University.

The debate performances were not a surprise to South Carolinians who saw similar performances when she ran for governor, Vinson said.

“She’s incredibly competent, she can talk about any policy area, she also knows how to throw in attacks with a smile on her face, sometimes a grimace in the case of Vivek Ramaswamy,” Vinson said. “She was able to do that, which allowed her to rise to the top of all those other people that might not have been as familiar on a national stage.”

But the last debate between her and DeSantis did not help, said Scott Huffmon, the director of the Winthrop University Poll.

“The DeSantis-Haley debate wasn’t exactly her best debate moment,” Huffmon said. “It was just two hours of them calling each other liars. She didn’t have as many incredible quips or incredible great lines as in the past.”

Her debate performances led to an increase in polling, but still not enough to catch up to Trump.

Haley finished third in the Iowa Caucus, as she closely battled with DeSantis for second place. DeSantis dropped out before New Hampshire, giving Haley a one-on-one match up with the former president. After not campaigning in Nevada and losing to “none of these candidates,” Haley hoped her home state where she previously had not lost an election would help her close the gap.

“Haley needed every piece to fall into place perfectly for her to have a path to the nomination, and that included the decline of DeSantis, which started, but coming into Iowa, she needed a surprise second and for Donald Trump to get under 50% so his veneer of inevitability was cracked,” Huffmon said. “Neither of those things happened.”

In the weeks leading to her dropping out, Haley lowered expectations and repeatedly said she only wanted to continue to build momentum and close the gap between her and Trump.

Trump has the backing of the top Republican establishment in South Carolina including Gov. Henry McMaster, Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette, Attorney General Alan Wilson, U.S. Sens. Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott, U.S. Reps. Jeff Duncan, Russell Fry, Nancy Mace, William Timmons and Joe Wilson, House Speaker Murrell Smith, House Majority Leader Davey Hiott and many other state lawmakers.

“Largely we all made the same mistake,” Tompkins said. “We miscalculated the enduring strength of Donald Trump and his hold on the majority of the Republican Party base.”

As campaigning picked up in South Carolina after New Hampshire’s primary, Trump’s campaign consolidated support among many of the GOP members of the State House of Representatives, a move that highlighted that many of those in South Carolina did not support Haley’s presidential bid and her previous sour relationships with lawmakers.

Haley hoped to duplicate her 2010 run for governor when she was behind for much of the primary campaign in a four-person race as she campaigned against the establishment. She was often referred to as “Nikki who.” But a statewide ad buy by ReformSC and an endorsement from former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who became a Tea Party star, helped propel Haley to a first place finish in the primary, and ultimately win the nomination in a runoff.

But Haley did not get an endorsement of that level in her presidential campaign, as the most prominent politician in the Republican Party of that star power is Trump.

Haley’s exit from the race leaves Trump as the only candidate remaining in the GOP field and allows him to start his general election campaign against President Joe Biden, while only a handful of states have voted.

Haley, who served as ambassador to the United Nations for two years in the Trump administration, for the most part avoided high-profile mistakes, but one comment before voting started took over several news cycles.

She struggled to say slavery was the cause of the Civil War and questions about racism in the country’s past proved to be a stumbling block that brought increased scrutiny amid several news cycles.

“I don’t think that comment helped her,” said Chip Felkel, who previously worked on the campaigns of George Bush and George W. Bush.“I think she tried to nuance everything. She says America is not a racist country, and then she quickly flips back to how she experienced racism growing up a brown girl in Bamberg.”

Vinson called the comment an unforced error that took Haley off message.

“It’s not that Trump does any better on that front, but it’s the difference between people deciding to get up on a cold day and go vote for you, or staying home and throw up your hands,” Vinson said. “That was one of the few unforced errors I’ve seen her make in this last year.”

As the field narrowed Haley sharpened her attacks at Trump as the former president targeted her more as she became the biggest threat to his campaign. In recent weeks Haley pointed to how Trump will be preoccupied with court hearings during the campaign. She criticized Trump’s decision not to debate, his stances on NATO and shot back at him when he mocked her husband’s military service.

As she said chaos follows Trump, she also pointed to general election polls that show her having the best margin against President Biden, beating him outside the margin of error in the general election and in key swing states.

But it’s an argument that didn’t sway the Republican base, and the most fervent Trump supporters, many who believe he did not lose the 2020 election and that fraud was rampant in the election. Trump’s own attorney general said there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud.

“The coronation is complete and for all intents and purposes the 2024 general election has just started,” Felkel said.

Haley stood to benefit most from Scott and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie dropping out, but she needed a true one-on-one race and find a way to peel supporters away from Trump to win the nomination.

But political observers say she probably should have gone after Trump more aggressively sooner.

“She went after everybody who was on the (debate) stage, but didn’t go after the guy who wasn’t on the stage,” Felkel said.

Haley in an interview in late January said she didn’t regret waiting to go after Trump, saying she wanted the field to clear for a one-on-one matchup.

“If I focused on Donald Trump in the beginning, I would have ended up like Chris Christie,” Haley said.

Vinson said Haley’s attacks on Trump needed to be more direct.

“What she has done wrong is she has let Trump skate far too long,” Vinson said. “There were ways to raise doubts about Trump and potentially cut into his support without even attacking him personally.”

Throughout Haley’s campaign she pointed to how she could win the general election popular vote, performing best in polls against Biden compared to other Republicans in the race. She pointed to how Trump lost the popular vote in 2016 and 2020 and how chaos follows him.

But ultimately, Haley could not overcome Trump’s dominance, his ability to run as a quasi-incumbent, and his increased popularity within the party after being facing 91 criminal charges and civil court judgments against him.

“You have to run a near perfect campaign and even that might not have been sufficient because Trump had such a ridiculous lead to begin with,” Vinson said.