WILL THERE BE A LONG GOP RACE? Two things appear to be true about Nikki Haley’s run for president. 1) She appears set to lose her home state of South Carolina, meaning that by Saturday night, she will have lost Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina. And 2) She will not quit.
“South Carolina will vote on Saturday,” Haley said Tuesday at a speech in Greenville. “But on Sunday, I’ll still be running for president. I’m not going anywhere.”
It was notable that when Haley announced she would be giving what she called a “State of the Race” speech Tuesday, some observers, like me, thought she might announce her departure from the race. Her campaign gave off-the-record guidance that that was not going to happen. Still, some campaigns have said they were in the race right up until the moment the candidate dropped out. In any event, Haley began her speech by saying, “Some of you, perhaps a few of you in the media, came here today to see if I’m dropping out of the race.” The answer was a definite no.
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Shortly before Haley’s speech, former President Donald Trump’s campaign released a memo declaring “the end is near” for Haley. Anticipating that Haley would make a reference to how the United States does not have kings and coronations — in fact, she did say, “We don’t anoint kings in this country. We have elections” — the Trump campaign said that the results of actual elections have “overwhelmingly sent an unmistaken message: Nikki Haley doesn’t represent Republicans any more than Joe Biden does.”
The Trump memo went through the delegate math of the GOP race. The conclusion was that even with the most generous assumptions for Haley, Trump will win enough delegates to win the Republican nomination by March 19. With better results for Trump, the former president will win a week earlier, by March 12.
Indeed, it does appear that Haley is doomed. No Republican candidate has won Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina and gone on to lose the GOP nomination. And no candidate has lost all those states and gone on to win.
But Haley has a few factors going on her behalf. 1) She has the support of a group of donors determined to bring down Trump. 2) To go with that, she has the support of the relatively small portion of the GOP electorate determined to do the same thing. 3) She has the interest of an anti-Trump media. And 4) She has the ever-present possibility that Trump’s legal problems might finally lay him low at some point before the Republican convention, and she would stand as his ready substitute.
In addition, Haley has seen a slight improvement in the South Carolina polls in the last week or so. Yes, the latest poll, from Suffolk University and USA Today, had Trump leading Haley by 28 points, 63% to 35%. But if you look at the RealClearPolitics average of polls, just a week ago, on Feb. 14, Haley was trailing Trump by 33.5 points. Now, she trails Trump by 25.3 points. That’s an 8-point improvement in just a week. The bad news, of course, is that she still trails Trump by 25 points. Maybe that will close a bit more in the campaign’s final days.
And then there is history. Yes, no Republican candidate has ever lost all the early states and gone on to win. But that doesn’t mean everybody dropped out after South Carolina. Just look at Trump’s first race for president, the 2016 Republican primary battle.
In that year, Ted Cruz won Iowa, and then Trump won New Hampshire. (Nevada did not vote until later.) That led to South Carolina on Feb. 20, 2016. There was a big field still in the race: Trump, Cruz, Marco Rubio, John Kasich, Ben Carson, and Jeb Bush. Trump won South Carolina decisively, by 10 points in a multicandidate field. Still, only Bush dropped out afterward; the rest stayed in through Nevada on Feb. 23, and then Super Tuesday on March 1.
Trump won most, but not all, of the Super Tuesday states — Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Vermont, and Virginia. But Cruz won Alaska, Oklahoma, and his home state of Texas, while Rubio won Minnesota. That gave them enough fuel to go on a bit. Kasich, who won nothing, stayed on, too, while Carson dropped out.
In the next week of primaries, Trump won the most — Kentucky, Louisiana, Hawaii, Michigan, and Mississippi. But Cruz won Kansas, Maine, Idaho, and Wyoming, and Rubio won Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C. Kasich again won nothing but refused to drop out.
The field stayed in for the next round of primaries on March 15. Trump won nearly everything — Florida, Illinois, Missouri, and North Carolina. Cruz won nothing, and Rubio won nothing — the Florida senator was particularly devastated by the loss of his home state and dropped out on election night. And Kasich finally won something — his home state of Ohio.
There were still three candidates in the race — Trump, Cruz, and Kasich — going into late March and April. Trump won Arizona, North Dakota, and New York, but Cruz won Utah, Wisconsin, Colorado, and Wyoming. Kasich won nothing. Then, on April 26, Trump cleaned up in a group of primaries, winning Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island. Cruz won nothing, and Kasich won nothing.
The final showdown happened on May 3, with the Indiana primary. It was a hard-fought race between Trump and Cruz, and Trump won big. Cruz dropped out in a wave of bitterness afterward. Kasich finally quit, too.
The bottom line is that Trump had competition until May 3, 2016. It was clear before that date that Trump would wrap up the nomination, but that did not stop Cruz from staying in. By doing so, he consolidated the anti-Trump vote in what became not-quite-a-two-man race. Cruz won 37% of the vote in the Indiana primary, to go with Kasich’s 8%.
So, the 2016 race went well past South Carolina. But one key lesson from 2016 is that each candidate who stayed in the race won something. Cruz won some contests, Rubio won some, too, and even Kasich stayed in long enough to win his home state. The candidates who could not win anything dropped out by South Carolina.
The situation is not quite the same today. Trump is running as a quasi-incumbent, and there is no Kasich nuisance candidacy. But Nikki Haley, should she lose South Carolina, can say on election night: Hey, it’s only Feb. 24. No, I haven’t won anything, and I lost my home state, but I still might win somewhere, so there’s no reason the race can’t go on for a while. Trump won’t like it, and he will almost certainly still win, but the race goes on — until it doesn’t.
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