The polls are dreadful, her delegate count is underwhelming, and she is about to lose her home-state primary, but Nikki Haley isn’t dropping her presidential bid.
Instead, she is aggressively raising money and looking beyond the South Carolina primary on Saturday to Super Tuesday, when she will try to carve a winning path with independents and even Democratic voters in her quest to stop prohibitive front-runner and former President Donald Trump.
The former South Carolina governor says she is in it to win, but political analysts say she may be clinging to her candidacy to strengthen her chances in 2028.
Mr. Trump is leading in the delegate count and has yet to lose a primary or caucus. Ms. Haley hasn’t won one contest and is poised for more losses. Mr. Trump is leading significantly in the polls in every upcoming primary.
“With Trump cruising towards the nomination, Haley could be showing Republican primary voters that she is a viable candidate in four years when the ballot could be wide open,” Republican political strategist Ron Bonjean said.
Ms. Haley is barnstorming like she can win.
SEE ALSO: Nikki Haley rejects calls to drop out of GOP race: ‘I am not going anywhere’
At a rally in Texas last week, she sent a strong signal that she plans to stick it out through Super Tuesday on March 5, when 874 delegates are up for grabs in the state and 15 other states and territories.
Ms. Haley is the sole survivor of more than a dozen second-tier candidates who competed for the nomination against Mr. Trump. She even outlasted Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, an early primary favorite.
Like her fallen opponents, she has been unable to close an enormous gap with the former president in polls or on the ground in primary states.
She is not giving up.
“We defeated a dozen of the fellas. I just got one more fella I got to catch up to,” she told hundreds of supporters gathered in a ballroom at Gilley’s Dallas.
Her campaign has plenty of cash to keep going for a while. It raised $16.5 million in January alone and another $1.7 million at fundraising events that Ms. Haley attended in California in early February.
SEE ALSO: Trump campaign predicts ‘end is near’ for Nikki Haley’s presidential bid
Despite large campaign rally crowds and a healthy campaign coffer, Ms. Haley faces a humbling defeat in the primary in South Carolina, where she served as governor from 2011 to 2017.
Mr. Trump is ahead by an average of 30 percentage points in the state. His comfortable lead and long list of endorsements from state leaders haven’t stopped him from trashing Ms. Haley, who served under him as ambassador to the United Nations.
He has awarded her the derogatory nickname “birdbrain” and questioned why her husband is not campaigning alongside her. (He is deployed to Africa with the South Carolina National Guard.)
Ms. Haley, 51, is campaigning as an alternative to two “grumpy old men” — Mr. Trump, 77, and Mr. Biden, 81 — and casts herself as a representative of a new generation of conservatives who can win the general election and govern without the “chaos” and legal entanglements that have engulfed Mr. Trump.
She embarked on a three-day bus tour of her home state over the weekend.
After the death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny in a Russian prison on Friday, Ms. Haley said in a statement that Mr. Trump, who has praised the Russian president, “continues to side with Vladimir Putin over our allies and our military service members.”
“Every time he was in the same room with him, he got weak in the knees,” Ms. Haley said at one event. “We can’t have a president that gets weak in the knees with Putin.”
In his first comment on Mr. Navalny’s death, Mr. Trump on Monday compared it to his own legal problems. He said it has “made me more and more aware of what is happening in our Country.”
He posted on Truth Social that “Open Borders, Rigged Elections, and Grossly Unfair Courtroom Decisions are DESTROYING AMERICA. WE ARE A NATION IN DECLINE. A FAILING NATION!”
On Friday, InsiderAdvantage released a survey of 800 likely voters in the South Carolina Republican primary and found Mr. Trump leading Ms. Haley 60% to 38%.
Poll director Matt Towery said Ms. Haley will unlikely cross the 40% threshold. He said her numbers could be strengthened by the efforts of her aligned political action committees, which are recruiting Democrats who did not participate in their party’s primary to turn out and vote for Ms. Haley.
“Our survey indicates that this effort may have some impact but will be unlikely to provide any major boost for Haley,” Mr. Towery said. “She will likely lose the state where she once served as governor, and the results, even if she moves into the low 40% range, will likely provide her little assistance or momentum in the onslaught of Super Tuesday states that will quickly follow.”
Mr. Trump has 63 delegates out of 1,215 needed to win the nomination. Ms. Haley has won only 17, and Mr. Trump’s delegate haul will likely grow quickly and significantly.
About one-third of the Super Tuesday states award all delegates to a candidate who wins a majority of the vote, which Mr. Trump is poised to do. In several other states, a candidate who garners more than 50% of the vote is awarded every delegate.
Mr. Trump could wrap up the nomination in March if his winning streak continues, as polls suggest.
Pollster Ron Faucheux said Ms. Haley faces “brutal” losses in the upcoming primaries.
Facing such long odds, Mr. Faucheux said, could mean that Ms. Haley’s continued campaign is aimed at positioning herself to replace Mr. Trump if he is convicted in any of the four criminal cases he is facing, or she may simply be positioning herself for 2028 or staying in the race to damage Mr. Trump as much as possible.
“Her running against both Biden and Trump also raises the question whether she may have a glimmer of hope that she could still run as an independent if South Carolina doesn’t work out,” he said.
• Susan Ferrechio can be reached at sferrechio@washingtontimes.com.
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