South Carolina primary 2024: Trump projected to win, Haley vows to stay in the race

I tend to agree with you, Geoffrey. Haley is presenting a very different kind of agenda and policy positions than the more MAGA side of the Republican Party. And voters are noticing the difference.

In polling from YouGov/CBS News in February, likely South Carolina GOP primary voters were asked how they thought each candidate’s policies would impact the country if they were to win the presidency. Seventy-three percent said Trump’s policies would make them financially better off, while only 32 percent said the same of Haley. On immigration, 88 percent of voters said that Trump’s policies would make the U.S.-Mexico border more secure, compared to 53 percent who said the same of Haley’s policies.

The contrast is particularly stark on foreign policy: When asked how Haley’s policies would impact U.S. military involvement overseas, 41 percent said she would increase, 44 percent said she would not change and 15 percent said she would decrease military involvement. The reverse was true of what voters expected from Trump: a plurality of 47 percent thought Trump’s policies would decrease U.S. military involvement overseas, while 20 and 33 percent expected his policies to not change or to increase involvement, respectively.

So I’d buy an argument that Haley may be staying in to keep a more hawkish foreign policy position alive in the party, which makes sense, given her history as U.N. Ambassador.

—Mary Radcliffe, 538

To Julia's point, up until now Haley has seemed like a classic "office-seeker" candidate — that is, someone running to win. Those kinds of candidates usually drop out once it becomes clear that they cannot win and that remaining in the race could damage them politically. However, there are also "agenda-seeker" candidates who are running to potentially promote a political agenda of some kind. If Haley is looking at the Republican Party and saying, "I probably don't have much of a future in a Trumpian GOP," perhaps — perhaps — she's looking to stay in the race to push back against the Trumpian direction of the party. To be clear, this is always a losing proposition in the near term. But agenda-seeking candidates often want to stay in the race as long as possible to broadcast their larger political agenda as long as they can.

—Geoffrey Skelley, 538

The questions about Haley dropping out touch on some bigger issues in the contemporary nomination process. The unwritten rules of the game matter a lot in presidential nomination politics, and in the past, a candidate like Haley — like John McCain in 2000 or Mitt Romney in 2008 — might stay in the race long enough to establish themselves as a viable candidate for a future race. But there’s also pressure for a candidate who clearly won’t win to suspend their campaign and unify the party. Trump’s unusual political trajectory has scrambled these unwritten rules of the game, however. Haley has said she won’t "kiss the ring", but there will be a lot of talk about whether she should leave the race, as the other competitors have. This depends not only on how the informal rules of the game work, but also on what Haley’s goals are. If she’s mostly setting her sights on 2028, then we might expect her to wind her candidacy down soon, in order to regain some standing among an increasingly Trump-loyal GOP. But her comments this week suggest that she’s running to push back on Trump’s dominance in the party, and perhaps to make the point that a political party is still just that: not only a movement focused on a single individual.

—Julia Azari, 538 contributor

Haley is the last one standing among major candidates competing with Trump for the Republican presidential nomination. With the odds so devastatingly stacked against her, what exactly is Haley trying to do by continuing her campaign and risking getting trounced in her home state?

As I wrote on the site last week, there are certain benefits to presidential runs even when it seems clear a candidate isn't going to become the nominee. One such benefit is raising a candidate's profile in the public eye, something Haley has definitely reaped throughout the primary. When she officially launched her campaign last February, the share of Americans who had either a favorable or unfavorable opinion on her (a decent proxy for a candidate's name recognition) hovered around 55-60 percent. Lately, that number is closer to 75 percent:

It could be that Haley is continuing her campaign to tee up a 2028 bid. The GOP tends to favor also-rans when choosing a nominee in years when there isn't an incumbent running: From 1980 through 2020, there was only one year (2000) when the Republican nominee wasn't either an incumbent or someone who had run previously (if you count Trump's third-party run for president in 2000). And as Trump's only major challenger still in the race, she's still pulling in media and public attention, as well as a decent supply of donations.

Haley has become increasingly critical of Trump. Despite previously serving in his administration, Haley says Trump is no longer "the right president." She's dragged him for his legal woes and drawn attention to his age. Positioning herself in this way could serve future political ambitions by setting her up as the new face of the Reagan wing of the GOP.

Some of the other benefits of a continued run are less likely to explain Haley's tenacity. Given her conservative record as governor, she's not exactly trying to push Trump or the party to the center (despite garnering some support among moderate and independent voters). And given Trump's hardline on loyalty, it's unlikely she'd be able to parlay this campaign into another job in a second Trump administration. Besides, she says she's not interested anyway, telling the “Today” show recently: "I don't want anything. I don't want [to be] vice president."

And of course, we shouldn't write off the potential that Haley still thinks there's a path for her to win. Trump's continued legal disputes remain an unknown factor, and Haley could be hoping that by simply hanging on long enough, she could become the next best option should Trump, for one reason or another, no longer be a viable nominee.

—Kaleigh Rogers, 538