Nikki Haley’s campaign is cooked 

About a year ago, I wrote an article right after Nikki Haley announced her 2024 presidential campaign in which I declared that she has no chance of winning the Republican nomination and would drop out before the Iowa caucuses. She ended up proving my second point wrong, as she’s one of two major Republican candidates left in the race, the other being former president-turned-sneaker salesman Donald Trump. But after a disastrous February, her campaign is on life support and “skyrocketing downward” as Trump would say. Though she has refused to drop out, it’s abundantly clear that her campaign is cooked. 

Haley’s struggles this month began on Feb. 6 in Nevada’s state-run presidential primary, a symbolic contest which awarded no delegates due to the Nevada Republican Party hosting its own presidential caucus to protest the switch from a caucus to a primary. Despite Trump’s absence from the ballot, Haley lost the primary to an option called “none of these candidates,” which isn’t even a real, breathing candidate. It’s not like she lost by a slim margin, either; she got absolutely bodied. She only received a laughable 30.6% of the vote, while “none of these candidates” received 63.3%. Essentially, she literally lost to nobody. Despite the contest having no implications, having a supermajority of voters say that they would rather vote for no one than vote for her was damning for Haley. What makes her defeat even more embarrassing is that her loss cemented her as the first presidential candidate in the history of Nevada to lose to “none of these candidates” since the option was implemented in 1975. To be the first person in nearly 50 years to accomplish this feat shows how badly Haley has failed to connect with Republican voters. 

However, the result in Nevada didn’t deter Haley, who vowed to stay in the race and focus on winning the pivotal South Carolina primary. She spent millions in advertisements to score a much-needed victory in her home state and give her campaign the boost it needed. What happened instead was equally if not more embarrassing than the Nevada result as Trump steamrolled her by nearly 20 points. Haley didn’t even manage to break 40%, with her total clocking in at 39.5% while only winning a meager three counties. To not even finish with a close margin or get 40% of the vote was the worst case scenario for Haley, and South Carolina voters made sure to make that happen. Unfortunately for Haley, in presidential primaries, losing your home state by a double-digit margin is more often than not the death knell to a campaign. The most relevant example here would be in 2016 when Sen. Marco Rubio suspended his presidential campaign after losing his home state of Florida (though his campaign was finished after Chris Christie destroyed him in the New Hampshire debate).  

Despite recent precedent, Haley dug in her heels and declared that she would continue the campaign despite the home state loss. But she will be continuing her campaign without a key ally: the wallet of the Koch brothers. It was reported on Sunday that Americans for Prosperity Action, a group affiliated with the influential GOP donors Charles and David Koch, would no longer provide financial support to her campaign and would instead focus on key congressional races after her crushing defeat in the Palmetto state. The loss of support from the richest and most powerful donors in the Republican Party is perhaps the most damning blow Haley has suffered this month, as her campaign now needs every dollar it can get to even have a chance at the nomination.  

With two humiliating defeats and the loss of a key financial ally, Haley’s campaign stands on the verge of collapse as February ends. Trump has the nomination locked up, and at this point, the only way he doesn’t become the Republican nominee is if he dies. So while Haley has stayed in the presidential race longer than I ever thought she would, my prediction from last year that she won’t come anywhere near winning the nomination stands, and I fully expect her to drop out by Super Tuesday at the absolute latest.