As Super Tuesday looms and Governor Haley faces pressure to drop out, we offer a page from Wilkins Micawber. He was, in Dickens’ “David Copperfield,” the character who was always predicting that “something will turn up.” That could well serve as a slogan for Mrs. Haley’s campaign as President Trump wins one primary contest after another and new polling shows him ahead of President Biden. It might mark her best reason to stay in the race. 

We’re aware that Politico describes Mrs. Haley’s departure from the race as a matter of not if but “when.” The new polling, from the Times and Siena College, shows Mr. Trump ahead of Mr. Biden by some five points nationwide, bolstering the 45th president’s campaign rationale. Buried in the last paragraph of the Times’ report on its poll, though, is the fact that Mrs. Haley is running ahead of Mr. Biden by an even larger margin — ten points. 

That factoid suggests that the Times/Siena poll is less a vindication of Mr. Trump’s candidacy than it is a marker of Mr. Biden’s economic policy failures, default on immigration, and concerns over the 81-year-old incumbent’s age and acuity. The Biden campaign is “optimistic,” the Times reports, that “polling will narrow, and eventually flip” once “the choice between Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden becomes clearer.”

There is some justification for the Biden campaign’s confidence on that head. That’s because Mr. Trump’s apparent steamrolling in the GOP primaries to date is undermined by what Axios calls “Trump’s demographic problem.” If the election were decided by “old, white, election-denying Christians who didn’t go to college,” Axios reports, Mr. Trump would win in November by a landslide. The only wrinkle, Axios argues: “It’s not.”

It’s a “reality check,” as Axios puts it, that this demographic group “isn’t remotely big enough to win a presidential election” and that Mr. Trump “would need to attract voters who are more diverse, more educated and believe his first loss was legit.” The results of Palmetto State exit polls, Axios warned, “show he didn’t do that.” No wonder Mrs. Haley is sounding the alarm bell about Mr. Trump’s electability in the general election.

“If you have a candidate that can’t win 40% of the vote in the early states,” Mrs. Haley said of Mr. Trump before the Michigan primary, “if you have a candidate who can’t bring in independents, if you have a candidate that is driving people out of our party, then that is a sinking ship, guaranteeing a President Kamala Harris.” So are GOP primary voters putting their enthusiasm for Mr. Trump ahead of concerns about electability in November?

Our Matt Rice, in a news story, notes that the Times/Siena poll puts Mr. Trump “on track to take significant support from Mr. Biden and put it into his own column by November.” Mr. Trump “appears to be solidifying his grasp on his own party,” while Mr. Biden’s “coalition appears to be falling apart,” he notes. “Defections among young, Black, and Hispanic voters — as well as former Biden voters — could help return Mr. Trump to the White House next year,” Mr. Rice reckons.

The Times survey offers evidence that Mr. Trump is doing a better job broadening the GOP tent than Mrs. Haley suggests, as Mr. Biden’s support “among women, Black and Latino voters,” the Times itself reports, “continues to erode.” Yet Mrs. Haley’s concern was reflected in the outcome of Michigan’s primary, where her support in a key swing state suggests some GOP “voters may have misgivings about giving the former president another four years.” 

The precariousness of Mr. Trump’s lead is also underscored by recent polling by Bloomberg/Morning Consult which found that “a majority of independent voters in key swing states” would be “unlikely to vote for Mr. Trump in November were he to be convicted of a crime or sentenced to a prison term.” Considering the 91 indictments the former president faces in federal and state courts, this amounts to a substantial electoral hazard for the GOP.

Which brings us back to Micawber. His optimism is a leitmotif of Dickens’ masterpiece, despite a lack of obvious justification and even a stint in debtor’s prison. Yet he emerges as the hero of “David Copperfield” after exposing Uriah Heep’s villainy. He repays his debts, decamps for the Antipodes, and accedes to government office. A fictional tale, to be sure, but Mrs. Haley, for her part, has ample reason to expect that “something will turn up.”