For months, before groups both big and small, Nikki Haley would trot out a compelling statistic.
She was in an admirable position, she’d say, because she could beat President Joe Biden by 17 points, citing a Wall Street Journal poll. And even in recent weeks, Haley would argue that Donald Trump, on the other hand, would lose to Biden in the general election or, at the very least, was within the margin of error of losing.
The electability argument became central to Haley’s theory of the case against the former president.
But aside from her inability to lay out a winning path in the primary campaign, Haley ran up against another problematic fact: Poll after poll has shown Trump would beat Biden.
As time wore on, evidence for Haley’s argument disintegrated. And though she at times still polled ahead of Trump in general election matchups with Biden — a Marquette University poll found Haley would beat Biden by 16 points in Wisconsin among registered voters, while Trump was tied — she failed to gain traction among Republican voters.
And Wednesday, after a disappointing showing on Super Tuesday, she finally ended her bid. In brief remarks, Haley didn’t endorse Trump, saying essentially that the ball was now in his court to show that he could unite divisions within the party.
“It is now up to Donald Trump to earn the votes of those in our party and beyond it who did not support him. And I hope he does that,” Haley said. “At its best politics is about bringing people into your cause, not turning them away. And our conservative cause badly needs more people.”
Haley left open the possibility that she could run again in four years, saying the support she did win was a reflection of dissatisfaction with the status quo.
Haley has demonstrated a fundraising prowess in the last several months, enabling her to remain in the race even as she lost contests across the country. She could use money left in her campaign to power a 2028 bid or move it into a political action committee or another political vehicle for use going forward.
Her remarks capped nearly a year of campaigning, with an unspoken acknowledgment that what she laid out on the court wasn’t enough.
“I’ve been mystified, if not disappointed, by the reaction to the numbers,” said David Oman, a former co-chair of the Iowa Republican Party and a Haley supporter. “In order to change policy, you’ve got to win. It wasn’t just one poll that showed her ahead; it was several. Honestly, I thought people would pay more attention to that, but they didn’t. Trump has a stronghold on the party.”
She built the foundation of her campaign on sand.
Gregg Keller, GOP strategist
Sarah Longwell, a Republican strategist who regularly holds focus groups and counts herself as a “Never Trumper,” said that not only have polls showed Trump could win in a hypothetical general election matchup with Biden, but GOP primary voters just didn’t buy an argument that Biden could pose a threat in November.
“It was a miscalculation,” Longwell said of Haley’s focus on electability. “The majority of Republican voters believe Biden is so weak, that he has dementia — that’s what they believe — so why wouldn’t Trump beat him?”
Electability was just one part of Haley’s argument as she sought the nomination. By the time she dropped out, it was Haley, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, who had the electability problem. She ran up a significant deficit against Trump in the delegate race. And in one case, she lost to the “uncommitted” selection on the ballot in Nevada. More and more, there was evidence that her coalition was made up of independents and even Democrats and that it was losing support of Republicans. They were solidly Trump.
NBC News exit polls of Super Tuesday states Tuesday showed that Trump dominated with conservatives and that, in many cases, they decided to back him even before it became a two-person race.
All along, signs pointing to a Trump hold on GOP support were there.
In a New York Times/Siena College poll in December, Trump moved ahead of Biden in five of six battleground states and led beyond the margin of error in four of them. In January, an NBC News poll found Trump leading Biden by 5 points, within the poll’s margin of error. In February, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and CBS News were among the outlets that published polls with Trump in the lead.
A Monmouth University poll of South Carolina voters published in February found Haley’s electability argument didn’t penetrate. Of those polled, 71% of Republicans told pollsters they believed Trump would definitely or probably beat Biden, while 63% said Haley definitely or probably would.
“She built the foundation of her campaign on sand,” said Gregg Keller, a Republican strategist. “You cannot make polling the sole justification for your campaign, because polls are ever-changing.”
Keller added that part of the GOP electorate doesn’t believe in the results of past elections, much less polling results.
While Haley leaned heavily into polling, she also tried to position herself as the candidate who would bring generational change. She promised a balanced budget and cuts to the federal gas and diesel tax and, more broadly, to bring sanity — not chaos — to the White House. Her stump speeches were heavy on foreign policy, emphasizing the importance of defending NATO allies and staving off Russian aggression against Ukraine.
Haley was the last one standing against Trump, and as that one-on-one race came into focus, she more aggressively attacked him. But that seemed to only cause her unfavorable ratings to rise.
While some Republicans, like Longwell, have faulted Haley for not having gone more aggressive against Trump earlier, Keller argued that would have made little difference. The criminal cases against him have failed to repel Republican voters anyway, he said.
Ultimately, she failed to build a large enough coalition of voters to defeat Trump and faltered in primaries in state after state.
“There was without a doubt an electability lane, but that lane mostly belonged to Ron DeSantis, who blew the once-significant lead he had in late 2022 and early 2023 by taking too long to get into the race,” said Dennis Lennox, a Republican strategist. “By the time Haley finally had her moment, it was too late, and Republicans for assorted reasons did their political calculations and decided to consolidate behind Trump.”
But the bigger failure, Longwell said, was the field as a whole didn’t capitalize on Trump’s real weaknesses and instead granted him dispensation on some of the most severe allegations against him, including the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and the litany of felony charges he faces.
“It’s always been a collective action problem in the Republican Party. It’s not just Nikki,” she said. “When you defend the guy when he’s indicted on multiple felonies and you build a permission structure for voters to support him — don’t be surprised when they do.”
