Michigan Results Show End Is Near for Nikki Haley’s GOP Candidacy

Photo: Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

Michigan’s primary on Tuesday night was the third straight presidential contest in which non-GOP voters were free to cross over and vote for Nikki Haley — and Donald Trump increased his winning margin yet again. He won New Hampshire by 11 percent and South Carolina by 20 percent; both independents and Democrats could vote in those primaries. Now, in Michigan’s GOP primary, which allowed independents to cast ballots, he’s winning by 41 percentage points (he’s at 68 percent to Haley’s 27 percent with 95 percent of the votes counted). We don’t have exit-poll data from Michigan, but it’s very likely that Trump won big among self-identified Republicans and that whatever success Haley had with non-Republicans wasn’t remotely enough. But she has already promised to carry on to a certain bloodbath on Super Tuesday (March 5), when 16 states hold primaries or caucuses.

In her campaign’s comment on the Michigan results, however, Team Haley talked not in terms of its doomed nomination challenge to Trump but of its positioning against both Trump and Biden.

“Joe Biden is losing about 20 percent of the Democratic vote today, and many say it’s a sign of his weakness in November. Donald Trump is losing about 35 percent of the vote,” Haley spokeswoman Olivia Perez-Cubas said in a statement.

Those numbers aren’t quite right, but the idea that Haley’s competing with two general-election weaklings is clearly becoming her rationale for candidacy. It provides another bit of evidence that she may be moving toward the exit door of the GOP race and reconsidering her earlier lack of interest in a general-election bid at the top of a hypothetical unity ticket sponsored by the nonpartisan group No Labels. As Michiganders voted, No Labels let it be known that delegates to a virtual convention would be voting on March 8 to determine if they would indeed run a presidential candidate. It may not be a coincidence that March 8 is three days after the likely expiration date of Haley’s Republican candidacy.

“Sore loser” laws in eight states barring defeated candidates in one party from running on another party’s ticket could throw a wrench into any Haley No Labels candidacy. But her increasingly bitter rhetoric about Trump and her now-regular plague-on-both-houses comparisons of the two major-party candidates certainly suggest that’s her likely direction going forward. It would definitely explain why ever-larger GOP-primary defeats aren’t convincing her to fold her tent and go home.