Daunting poll numbers to test Haley’s staying power in 2024 race

The day after Nikki Haley finished more than 30 points behind “none of these candidates” in Nevada, her presidential campaign touted a “blowout win” in another battleground state.

“In Wisconsin, Haley has blowout win; Trump has blowup,” read the subject line of an email from the former United Nations ambassador’s team. 

The win in question was yet another poll showing Haley outperforming former President Donald Trump against President Joe Biden in a hypothetical general election matchup.

“Democrats couldn’t dream up a weaker general election candidate than Donald Trump if they tried. They know the only way their grumpy old man wins is if he’s running against another grumpy old man,” Haley spokeswoman AnnMarie Graham-Barnes said in the statement. “With Nikki Haley on the ballot, Republicans will not only win the White House, they’ll win the Senate, the House, governors’ races, and statehouses across America. If Republicans are tired of losing, Nikki will end the GOP slump.”

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But Haley’s prospects for making it to the general election against Biden look increasingly remote. Trump has broken 60% in Haley’s home state of South Carolina, where she was twice elected governor, according to the RealClearPolitics polling average. Haley is at 29.3% in what will be the next state where the two compete head to head.

The 63% for none of the above in Nevada was largely a pro-Trump vote. Trump wasn’t on the primary ballot, opting instead for the GOP-run caucus, which actually awards delegates. Haley is not competing in that contest.

Haley still has an argument to make for why she would be a stronger Republican nominee than Trump. She did well enough in both Iowa and New Hampshire to justify continuing her campaign, though she lost both states. In the first-in-the-nation caucuses, she also placed behind Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), who has since suspended his campaign and endorsed Trump.

There is a constituency for Haley. She raised $16.5 million in January, a solid haul. Though she relied heavily on crossover votes to do so, she broke 40% against Trump in New Hampshire. That’s better than Pat Buchanan did against George H.W. Bush in 1992 in what was considered an embarrassing performance for the sitting president.

The problem for Haley is that the best-case scenario for her campaign might be Buchanan’s 1992 bid. Buchanan peaked in New Hampshire and never won a single state, though he often did well enough to highlight discontent with the incumbent.

That raises an important question: How long will this be enough to justify Haley staying in? The argument for Haley’s continued presence in the race is that so far, few states have voted, and while Trump has won, his majorities have been small for a quasi-incumbent.

But the argument was originally that Trump was incapable of winning majorities among Republican voters and needed multiple opponents to split the anti-Trump vote. If the field was reduced to two people, he would be limited to the hardcore MAGA bloc, which was said to be around 35% of the primary electorate. Instead, he has gotten majorities, winning Iowa by 30 points in a three-way race and receiving a record number of raw votes in New Hampshire under optimal conditions for Haley.

Soon, Trump’s numbers might begin to look more like that of an incumbent president beating back a primary challenger. Morning Consult has him leading native daughter Haley by 37 points in South Carolina, with more than two-thirds of the vote. 

Polling for Super Tuesday states is even worse news for Haley, with Trump leads ranging from 41 to 77 points. Morning Consult shows Trump winning 76% of the vote in North Carolina, 78% in Virginia, 81% in Tennessee, 83% in California, and 87% in Alabama. 

This is consistent with the national poll numbers. In the RealClearPolitics average, Trump is at 74.4% to Haley’s 18.1%. He broke 80% in the latest Economist-YouGov survey and is below 70% in only one of the last nine polls included in the average, and even that one shows Trump with a clear majority of the vote and a 33-point lead.

Trump led by 8.5 points at this time in 2016, Mitt Romney by 11.5 points by this juncture of 2012, and John McCain by 18.7 in 2008. All went on to win the nomination. 

Haley could probably weather being on the losing end of a series of 60-40 contests, at least until the delegate math becomes untenable. Forty percent could conceivably be grown into 50% plus one. If not, it is a large enough slice of the primary electorate to deserve some representation in the race until Trump clinches, which his campaign is aiming to do by mid-March. “A choice this election” was the subject line of a Haley fundraising email sent on Wednesday.

Being on the wrong end of 70-30 or 80-20 contests will be a tougher sell to prospective donors. It will also be more suggestive of a pro-Trump consensus in the party, no matter what the polls testing Haley against Biden say.

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Haley is the last major Republican candidate running against Trump. But she is also running to keep herself in the running, at least to Super Tuesday, if not all the way to the Republican National Convention.

South Carolina will be the next test of Haley’s staying power.

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