Nikki Haley at a campaign event in August, South Carolina on February 21, 2024.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Unlikely to win in South Carolina, Nikki Haley set a benchmark for herself: better than 43%.That’s how much of the vote she won in New Hampshire, her best state so far.But she failed to do even that, election results show.
It’s been clear for weeks that Nikki Haley was going to lose her home state.
Facing that grim reality — and questions over how she could continue her quixotic challenge of former President Donald Trump after that happened — Haley set a lower benchmark for herself in South Carolina, the state where she served as governor for 8 years.
“I think I need to do better than I did in New Hampshire,” Haley said on Meet The Press on January 28. “I need to show that I’m building momentum.”
“Does that have to be a win? I don’t think that necessarily has to be a win,” she continued. “But it certainly has to be better than what I did in New Hampshire, and it certainly has to be close.”
Haley won 43.2% of the vote in New Hampshire, her best result so far. She later lost the Nevada primary — where she was the only candidate on the ballot — to “none of these candidates” in an embarrassing rebuke.
And on Saturday, Haley failed to exceed the 43.2% benchmark that she’d set for herself.
Nonetheless, Haley has made clear that she’s not dropping out, pointing to a slew of 21 primaries in the 10 days after South Carolina’s primary.
“I refuse to quit. South Carolina will vote on Saturday. But on Sunday, I’ll still be running for president,” Haley declared in a “State of the Race” speech last weekend. “I’m not going anywhere. I’m campaigning every day, until the last person votes.”
Typically, when presidential candidates lose their home states during a primary, they end their campaigns.
In 2020, Sen. Elizabeth Warren ended her Democratic primary bid after losing her home state of Massachusetts to Biden. And in 2016, Sen. Marco Rubio ended his campaign the same day that he lost Florida to Trump.
But Haley’s argument is that Trump may come to be weighed down by the criminal and civil charges he faces across a variety of jurisdictions and cases, and that Republicans deserve a candidate who polls stronger against Joe Biden in a general election.
Yet with Haley’s loss on Saturday, she’s only falling further behind. Trump already had 63 delegates to Haley’s 17, and under South Carolina’s winner-take-all system, Trump will get all 50 delegates from the state.
That leaves the former president with more than 6.5 times the number of delegates as Haley.