What Exactly Does Nikki Haley Think She’s Doing?

And what might it tell us about the destiny of Never Trump conservatives in our politics?

Republican presidential candidate, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, speaks during her primary election night gathering on February 24, 2024 in Charleston, South Carolina. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

In the months leading up to the Iowa caucuses, I frequently offered a prediction about the upcoming Republican primaries: Former President Donald Trump would win every single contest by double digits, making the race look more like a coronation than a genuine contest.  

I predicted this for a two main reasons: First, because the polls showed Trump far enough ahead to justify assuming that even with the challengers winnowed down to one, this last remaining alternative would fail to catch the frontrunner; second, because, as a former president, Trump is a quasi-incumbent, and incumbents usually win primaries by wide margins.

On Saturday, Trump beat native daughter Nikki Haley in the South Carolina primary by 20 points, 59.8 to 39.5 percent (with 99 percent of the vote counted). For months, the polls showed Trump beating her there by around 30 points, so Haley bettered expectations by a decent amount, which is something. But a loss is still a loss, and a 20-point defeat in a politician’s home state would normally be a campaign-ending humiliation. (Then-Ohio Gov. John Kasich came nowhere near winning the 2016 Republican primaries, but he did at least manage to win his home state.)

Yet Haley once again sounded defiant in her concession speech on Saturday evening, vowing to stay in the race and keep fighting. Meanwhile, Never Trump conservatives scattered across the country—and gathered at the Principles First summit in Washington D.C. this weekend—cheered her on.

But that raises the question of what exactly Nikki Haley thinks she’s doing by staying in the race through the 20-odd contests that will be held over the next ten days. I see four possible options to explain her motives.

Option 1: She’s in It to Win It

There are many reasons to run for president, and in most cases winning is somewhere in the mix, no matter implausible such an outcome might seem to an outsider. Most candidates cock their heads a little bit to the side and squint as they gaze toward the horizon, trying to imagine a series of (often highly implausible) events that could make them the nominee. This is what gets them out of bed every morning on the campaign trail, facing endless hours of tedium and exhaustion.

So I don’t doubt that Haley has at times convinced herself that she would not just dispatch Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and the others with whom she shared debate stages through the fall, but actually overtake her former boss for the lead. This was always highly unlikely. But now that voting has taken place in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina, we can see that it’s effectively impossible.

If you doubt it, just look at who Republicans are voting for.

Back in Iowa, when there were still multiple candidates in the race, Trump won 54 percent of Republican votes. DeSantis came in second in that contest with 24 percent, and Haley finished third with just 15 percent. A week later in the New Hampshire primary, with DeSantis, Chris Christie, and Vivek Ramaswamy out of the race, Trump won 74 percent of Republican votes to Haley’s 25 percent. The outcome a month after that in Haley’s home state was almost identical, with Trump winning 72 percent of Republicans to Haley’s 28 percent in the Palmetto State.

Listen to me very carefully: It is not possible to win the Republican nomination if you can’t manage to win even a third of the votes cast by Republican voters with only one other person in the race. It’s all well and good that Haley has been inspiring a decent number of Trump-loathing independents and Democrats to cast ballots for her, boosting her final tallies. But that won’t make her the nominee of her party—and Haley is too smart not to realize it.

Option 2: She’s Setting Herself Up for 2028