Nikki Haley is no longer running for president, but she’s still proving to be a major challenge to Donald Trump and his chances of avoiding prison winning back to the White House.
The former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and serial flip-flopper on everything from LGBTQ+ equality to abortion rights to slavery announced she was suspending her campaign for president on March 6, after winning just one of 14 Republican primaries on Super Tuesday.
But unlike nearly every other candidate to drop out before her, she did not endorse Trump on her way out the door.
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Nearly two months later, the 52-year-old still hasn’t endorsed her ex-boss and has been keeping a low profile as his various civil and criminal trials get further underway. She hasn’t done any major interviews or made any big announcements about her future plans, and she has been fairly quiet on social media, too.
But she did she win 17% of to votes in Pennsylvania’s primary last week. Trump, meanwhile, claimed the other 83%, despite spending the last two weeks slumped over the defendant’s table in a New York courtroom.
Still, the fact that Haley won 1 in 6 votes in the Keystone State when she’s been off both the campaign trail and the grid for almost two months is impressive for her… and bad news for the orange guy.
Very bad news, in fact.
Per AP:
Pennsylvania’s 19 electoral votes up for grabs in the presidential election make it a premier battleground state. So should those Haley GOP voters refuse to support Trump in November, it could prove a damaging blow to his prospects for victory in the state and, possibly, reelection.
Haley’s base was never big enough to seriously challenge Trump before he clinched a third straight Republican presidential nomination, but her supporters have continued to vote for her in primaries in Pennsylvania and elsewhere even after she dropped out.
With nearly all ballots counted in Pennsylvania’s primary, the former U.N. ambassador and South Carolina governor tallied more than 157,000 votes, or about twice the 80,500-vote margin by which Democrat Joe Biden beat Trump in Pennsylvania in 2020. Pennsylvania’s election was even closer in 2016, when Trump beat Democrat Hillary Clinton by 44,000 votes.
Speaking to the Philadelphia Inquirer after Haley’s surprisingly strong showing his state’s primary last week, former U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey said, “There is a non-trivial, significant minority of Republicans who are not going to vote for Donald Trump.”
Toomey, who was one of only seven Senate Republicans who voted to convict the ex-president after his second impeachment trial in the aftermath January 6, added that he was among the large percentage of voters who cast their ballots for Haley last week, and he said he’ll probably write in her name in November.
Since suspending her campaign, Haley has now managed to net close to a million votes, bringing her total primary season ballot haul up to 4,094,616. That’s more than 20% of all the ballots cast in 2024’s GOP primaries and caucuses. She also has the second-most number of delegates out of all the other candidates who ran for the party’s nomination.
Per The Nation:
What’s notable is that, even as a so-called “zombie candidate,” Haley continues to run up strikingly high vote totals and percentages in states that Trump has to win if he is the Republican nominee in November.
…There’s no doubt that some Haley voters will go to Trump in November. But it’s worth recalling that a national Emerson College poll from early March showed that 63 percent of Haley voters said they were likely to vote for Biden in November, while just 27 percent said they would go for Trump.
It could get even worse for Trump if he is convicted on any of the criminal charges he faces. In exit polling from New Hampshire, the first primary state of this election season, 84 percent of Haley voters said Trump would not be fit for office if he were found guilty.
As for Trump, tomorrow will be Day 8 of his criminal trial in New York, where he faces 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up a $130,000 hush money payment made to Stormy Daniels prior to the 2016 election.
Speaking to Kristen Welker just days before dropping out of the presidential primary, Haley said she thought all four of the ex-president’s criminal cases “should be dealt with before November.”
“We need to know what’s going to happen before it, before the presidency happens, because after that, should he become president, I don’t think any of it’s going to get heard,” she said.
Trump’s hush money trial will certainly be “dealt with” by then. The trial, which is about to enter its third week, is expected to last through June. If convicted, he could face up to four years in prison.
Meanwhile, the Republican National Convention is scheduled about three weeks later in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a state where polls showed Haley outperforming both Trump and Biden in the general election.
Hmmm. 🤔 🤔 🤔
Is it just us? Or is Haley’s end game coming further into focus?
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