If the latest polling is any guide, then Nikki Haley is about to get clobbered — electorally speaking — when voters go to the polls on Saturday in her home state of South Carolina.
A Suffolk University/USA Today poll released Tuesday shows the former U.N. Ambassador is set to lose the state she led for two terms as governor by 28 points to her former boss, Donald Trump.
“The story of this poll is the depth of strength shown by Trump,” David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center, told his polling partners at USA today.
According to the poll, the former president’s support among the South Carolina Republican electorate has not been harmed in the least by his many legal and civil troubles. Pollsters predict Trump will beat Haley by an almost 2:1 margin, 63% – 35%, despite his four criminal indictments and the 91 felonies they detail.
South Carolina, if Suffolk’s polling holds true, would represent a fifth consecutive win for Trump, who currently leads Haley in the party delegate count 63 — 17 after contests in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and the Virgin Islands.
An Emerson College/The Hill poll also released Tuesday showed Haley slightly closer to Trump in the Palmetto State — she’s within 23 points, according to the voters they surveyed — and it shows she’s doing slightly better than her former boss among voters who identify as independent but, even when so-called undecided voters are accounted for, not nearly well enough to win the state.
“South Carolina holds an open primary; there is a divide among Republican and independent affiliated voters,” Spencer Kimball, executive director of Emerson College Polling, said with the polls release. “Voters who affiliate as Republicans break for Trump over Haley, 71%-29%, while voters who affiliate as independent break for Nikki Haley 54% to 46%.”
Trump campaign surrogates Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles issued a memo regarding Haley’s electoral future on Tuesday morning, declaring that the former governors’ campaign will end exactly where it started.
“Nikki Haley’s campaign ends Saturday, February 24th, fittingly, in her home state, rejected by those who know her the best,” they wrote.
According to Trump’s team, even if Haley tries to hold on past Saturday or beyond that, through Super Tuesday when 21 U.S. states and territories will vote, the math shows she’s weeks away from certain defeat.
“If we were overly generous and applied a ‘worst case’ model reflecting Nikki Haley’s loss in New Hampshire across the remaining states and Congressional Districts, President Trump would earn 114 Delegates the week following the South Carolina Primary. On Super Tuesday, under this very favorable model for Nikki, President Trump would win 773 Delegates. President Trump would win an additional 162 Delegates the following two weeks, after Super Tuesday. And, on March 19, under this most-generous model for Nikki, President Trump would win the Republican nomination for President,” they said.
Haley delivered a “State of the Race” address on Tuesday, in which she promised to continue her campaign “until the last person votes” and regardless of Saturday’s primary results.
“I’m fighting for what I know is right. And I don’t care what the party leaders and political elites want. I’ll keep fighting until the American people close the door. That day is not today. And it won’t be Saturday. Not by a long shot. The presidential primaries have barely begun,” she said. “Americans of every belief and background are tired of our national mess. They don’t want more chaos and craziness. They worry about a national collapse.”
National polling averages show Haley trailing Trump by more than 57 points and, according to another recently released Emerson poll, “fifty-six percent of Republican Primary voters think Haley should drop out.”
