In a seemingly inevitable march to the Republican nomination to problem President Joe Biden in November, former President Donald Trump received the South Carolina Republican main. The New York Instances reported lower than half-hour after polls closed that Trump had defeated former Gov. Nikki Haley, his solely remaining challenger, in her own residence state.
Haley’s defeat ought to come as no shock: Going into the first, polling aggregator FiveThirtyEight gave Trump a 64 % polling common in comparison with Haley’s 33 %. Notably, that quantity was the best Haley had polled in her residence state since not less than April 2023.
However the defeat will probably nonetheless come as a blow to Haley, who reiterated this week that she meant to remain within the race “until the last person votes.” To that finish, she has deliberate over $1 million in advert spending in states that vote on “Super Tuesday,” March 5. However with the resounding loss on her residence turf signaling her more and more unsure path to the Republican nomination, it is much less clear than ever what hopes she really has of stopping the Trump-Biden rematch that voters are not looking for.
Regardless of framing her marketing campaign as a substitute for each Trump and Biden, Haley didn’t win over her state’s conservative base. In a latest CBS/YouGov ballot, 76 % of respondents stated that Haley was not “part of the ‘MAGA’ movement,” which almost half of South Carolina Republicans contemplate themselves part of.
Sarcastically, in the identical ballot, almost 90 % of respondents felt that Trump “might” or “would definitely” beat Biden within the basic election, whereas solely 75 % stated the identical about Haley. A latest Quinnipiac ballot discovered Biden main Trump by 49–45, whereas Haley leads Biden 46–43 in a head-to-head matchup.