Nikki Haley’s Game Plan

In advertising a “special announcement” on February 15, a former governor of South Carolina and ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, has all but announced that she will become one of the first major 2024 primary challengers to President Trump.The Post and Courier of Charleston, South Carolina, was the first to confirm that Ms. Haley will be entering the 2024 presidential race and, in doing so, starting the 2024 GOP primary election in earnest.Ms. Haley, who worked in Mr. Trump’s administration, has even secured the former president’s blessing in pursuing the challenge, as Mr. Trump told reporters at the South Carolina Statehouse last weekend.“‘I talked to her for a little while. I said, ‘Look, you know, go by your heart if you want to run,’” Mr. Trump said. “She called me and said she’d like to consider it, and I said you should do it.”Mr. Trump later appeared to retract his approval of Ms. Haley’s bid, sharing a video of her saying that she would not run if he did with the caption, “Nikki has to follow her heart, not her honor. She should definitely run!”A data scientist at Decision Desk HQ, Liberty Vittert, told the Sun that Ms. Haley has the advantage of being “one of the few people that got out of the Trump administration early enough to still be taken seriously by never Trumpers.”“However, data shows that her base would be similar to a DeSantis base and while early, for her, trying to beat out DeSantis and/or Trump would be almost impossible if the election was held today,” Ms. Vittert said.Although she added that “a lot can happen in the next year,” the crossover in support between Ms. Haley and Governor DeSantis led Ms. Vittert to conclude that Ms. Haley’s campaign is currently aimed at raising her profile and potentially becoming a vice president pick.While most polls confirm that Ms. Haley does not have a large base of GOP primary voters who prefer her over either Mr. Trump or Mr. DeSantis, not everyone has written off Ms. Haley’s campaign as a bid for vice president.A professor of political science at John Jay College, Brian Arbour, told the Sun that he sees Ms. Haley’s early announcement as a way to get out in front of what is likely to be a crowded field of non-Trump candidates.“I do see it as a legitimate run for president,” Mr. Arbour said. “While most of the focus in elite circles has been on DeSantis as a non-Trump candidate, there’s no guarantee that it would be DeSantis.”In his opinion, it’s not yet clear whether religious conservatives — one of the GOP’s most loyal voting blocks — will support Mr. Trump in this election or gravitate toward another candidate.“I don’t know that Haley is in the best position to get their support, but I don’t know that there is a clear candidate that is,” he said. “There are always candidates who surprise us and rise up in polls.”This doesn’t mean, in Mr. Arbour’s opinion, that Ms Haley isn’t also trying to raise her profile and potentially jump to the top of the list of vice presidential picks.It will be key to watch what Ms. Haley decides to do before or in the early stages of primary voting. If she drops out ahead of the first primary, it is a clear sign that she is angling for a vice presidential bid.Mr. Arbour compared this to Vice President Harris’s 2020 campaign. Although she was unable to gather critical support in her own campaign, she dropped out before she “burned too many bridges,” Mr. Arbour said.A political scientist at Washington University in Saint Louis, Daniel Butler, has a similar opinion. He told the Sun that he thinks Ms. Haley “has her sights on winning,” but that she may pivot and bow out early if it becomes clear she is not a top non-Trump candidate.Messrs. Arbour and Butler also agree that running for president has few downsides for Ms. Haley, giving her the opportunity to stay in the public consciousness while she is not serving in office.While Ms. Haley has a lot to gain and little to lose from running, there is another politician who potentially stands to gain from another candidate joining the Republican field: Mr. Trump.“The politician who benefits the most from a crowded field is Trump,” Mr. Butler said. “Trump has a loyal base. However, that base is not a majority of Republicans.”He said that Mr. Trump benefits from a crowded field because it makes it less clear who the eventual non-Trump frontrunner will be.“Trump’s most preferred outcome would be no credible opponents,” Mr. Butler said. “His second most preferred outcome is lots of credible opponents who split the non-Trump vote.”

Nikki Haley’s Game Plan

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