Donald Trump was tipped to be the winner of South Carolina’s Republican presidential primary on Saturday against rival Nikki Haley, keeping him on track to become his party’s nominee in 2024.
The Associated Press called the race in the former president’s favor as polls closed statewide at 7 p.m. Eastern time. With an estimated 33% of votes reported, Trump won 59% of the vote to Haley’s 40%, according to AP data.
Although Haley is a former governor of South Carolina, Trump was expected to win in his home state as he held a 23-point lead in state-focused polls, according to a rolling average of RealClearPolitics polls on Friday.
Haley is likely to face further pressure to drop out of the 2024 GOP race, but she said Tuesday that she will remain in the race at least until after the Super Tuesday primaries on March 5. She spoke of Americans’ “dissatisfaction with the candidate leaders,” saying there is still a chance to restore people’s faith, so she will “fight as long as that chance exists.”
Political analysts expect that he will keep his promises and not retreat in the near future.
Haley “seems likely to remain in the race regardless of the outcome in South Carolina” because she wants to remain the leading Republican alternative to Trump in 2024 or perhaps become the GOP front-runner for 2028, said Stephen Farnsworth, a political science professor. at the University of Mary Washington in Virginia, before Trump’s victory in the Palmetto State.
Trump, 77, could face a health crisis or a conviction in one of his ongoing criminal cases, and then Republicans “may have their doubts about his nomination” and prefer an alternative this year, Farnsworth told MarketWatch . And as for 2028, the Mary Washington expert noted that the GOP has a “history of using runners-up for subsequent nominees,” as when the party chose George H.W. Bush in 1988, John McCain in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012.
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Jeff Gulati, a political science professor at Bentley University in Massachusetts, also believes Haley, 52, is counting on a sudden setback for Trump or looking ahead to 2028.
“One of the benefits of going interstate, even if you get beat by a significant margin, is that you’re building an organization, and that … gives it a leg up for 2028,” Gulati said.
“And Trump is 77 years old. He’s got a lot of legal problems right now, so I think there’s also hope that maybe something will happen that forces him to withdraw, and then she’ll be the only one there.”
To be sure, Haley continues to look like a possibility for the 2024 Republican nomination, and many analysts have already turned to preparations for a rematch between Trump and President Joe Biden in November’s general election.
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In recent days, betting markets tracked by RealClearPolitics have put Haley’s chances of becoming the GOP nominee at only about 6%.
Gulati said a 6% chance might be “about right,” since “this is really Donald Trump, voluntarily or involuntarily, dropping out of the race.”
Farnsworth, on the other hand, said 6% seems optimistic, and 1% might be more accurate.
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