The only alternative candidate to Donald Trump, Nikki Haley, could see her electoral career doomed if the result of the Republican primaries in her home state, South Carolina, where she was governor between 2011 and 2017, confirms what the polls predict: a resounding defeat by more than 20 points. At the time of going to press, the polls in the southeastern state of the United States were still open.
But Haley is confident in her options, and on Tuesday she called the press to give a most unusual speech in a presidential campaign: she spent her entire speech explaining why she is not withdrawing from the race against Trump. “Some of you have come today to see if I will retire. Well, I'm not going anywhere, nothing is further from my intention,” she said in a speech broadcast live on the main cable networks.
Ten of the last eleven Republican candidates to win the South Carolina primary have gone on to win their party's nomination. It is a more diverse and representative state than those that have voted so far – Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada, all with unmitigated victories for Trump – and it is the penultimate to vote before the decisive date of Super Tuesday, December 5. March, in which 17 states and territories vote, and 874 of the 2,429 delegates who will elect the Republican nominee in July are decided.
Haley, the only one of Trump's rivals who has not withdrawn, has achieved her best results so far in New Hampshire, a month ago, where she lost to the former president by 11 points.
In the final stretch towards the polls in South Carolina, Trump gave a speech to the Black Conservative Federation on Friday in which he assured that he has the support of African Americans – 27% of the state's population – because he too is has criminalized him with the four charges against him. Yesterday, he gave his final speech at the conservative CPAC conference in Maryland, and headed to South Carolina, where he had another rally planned.
These primaries are open, so citizens registered as independents or democrats can also vote. Haley, who has toured South Carolina giving two speeches a day, is confident in the support of the latter, mobilized by the anti-Trump vote, to spring the surprise. But the state of which she was governor has been devoted to the magnate since he made his leap into politics in the 2016 elections, and it seems that only a miracle could turn it around.
