Donald Trump is now two-for-two in the GOP primaries, and Nikki Haley has twice failed to accomplish her goals. In Iowa, she wanted a strong second-place finish and ended up in third place. In New Hampshire, she was looking for a decisive victory yet lost by double digits, even with the help of Democratic voters.
The writing is clearly on the wall: she has no viable path to victory, yet once again, she treated her decisive defeat as a resounding victory and vowed to continue her campaign.
“Now you've all heard the chatter among the political class. They’re falling all over themselves, saying this race is over. Well, I have news for all of them,” Haley said. “New Hampshire is first in the nation, it is not the last in the nation. This race is far from over. There are dozens of states left to go. And the next one is my sweet home state of South Carolina.”
That's a tough position to take when even Ron DeSantis, who came in second place in Iowa, dropped out before New Hampshire. He saw the dynamics of the race and the math and realized there wasn't a path for victory for him. Haley's double-digit defeat in New Hampshire should have been the next clue that it's time for her to suspend her campaign.
Related: Can Someone Tell Nikki Haley It’s Over?
But we must backtrack a second here. Why? Because Haley is wrong. The next primary contest is not in South Carolina.
On February 8, we have the Republican caucuses in Nevada and the U.S. Virgin Islands. While we have no polling data for the latter, Trump leads by nearly 60 points in the polls in Nevada. Is Haley pretending these contests don't exist because she knows she's going to lose big there? Most likely.
Both caucuses are closed, which also benefits Trump. Haley can pretend these contests don't exist the way Biden chose not to compete in New Hampshire, but his allies still waged a write-in campaign for him to avoid an embarrassing defeat. Ignoring an election contest doesn't make it irrelevant.
So Haley is looking at another crushing defeat before she faces the voters of her home state, where she served as governor. This should be an easy win for her, but polls show she's trailing Trump by double-digits there. That would be a humiliating defeat. Probably one she doesn't want to go through.
I suspect Haley is now hoping that by coming in second (hardly a major accomplishment considering she is the last Trump challenger standing) her poll numbers will improve, but it's hard to see how back-to-back double-digit defeats are going to improve her standing in South Carolina — a state where she doesn't exactly have to introduce herself to the voters. They know her already and are choosing Trump. What's the point of delaying the inevitable unless you're trying to prove to Trump that you can get votes and thus should be chosen as his running mate?
At this point, I can't figure out any other possible motivation for staying in, and it's a risky gamble at that.
