In a seemingly inevitable march to the Republican nomination to challenge President Joe Biden in November, former President Donald Trump has won South Carolina’s Republican primary. The New York Times reported less than 30 minutes after the polls closed that Trump had defeated former Gov. Nikki Haley, his only remaining challenger, in his home state.
Haley’s defeat should come as no surprise: Going into primaries, poll aggregator FiveThirty-Eight gave Trump a polling average of 64% compared to Haley’s 33%. Notably, that number was the highest Haley surveyed in his home state since at least April 2023.
But the defeat will still likely be a blow to Haley, who reiterated this week that she intends to stay in the race “until the last person votes.” To that end, she has planned more than $1 million in ad spending in states voting on “Super Tuesday,” March 5. But with the resounding defeat at home signaling her increasingly uncertain path to the Republican nomination, it’s less clear than ever what hopes she actually has of preventing the Trump-Biden rematch that voters don’t want.
Despite casting her campaign as an alternative to both Trump and Biden, Haley has not won over her state’s conservative base. In a recent CBS/YouGov poll, 76% of respondents said Haley was “not part of the ‘MAGA’ movement,” of which nearly half of South Carolina Republicans consider themselves a part.
Ironically, in the same poll, nearly 90% of respondents believed Trump “could” or “definitely would” beat Biden in the general election, while only 75% said the same of Haley. A recent Quinnipiac poll found Biden leading Trump 49–45, while Haley leads Biden 46–43 in a head-to-head matchup.