The math is clear for Nikki Haley. Even though she outperformed polling expectations in her home state of South Carolina, getting 40 per cent of the vote to Trump’s 60 per cent, her path to the Republican nomination is only going to get harder now. Thanks to significant Republican rule changes that increased the number of winner-take-all states, Donald Trump should have the nomination officially locked up within a month. And while donor money can keep Haley afloat through that moment and perhaps beyond, she has lost the backing of the Koch machine, which is shifting its resources to lower level contests.
So what lessons, if any, should we take from Haley’s performance, and the fact that she ended up as the last woman standing against a Trump nomination that has seemed inevitable for months? The overall takeaway is that Trump has a problem with the same portion of the coalition that proved difficult for Republicans to win in 2020 and 2022: namely, college graduates, non-evangelical women and people who don’t think he won the 2020 election.
The real problem for these voters is that they tend to be more positive about the economic situation than others in the coalition.
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