Haley’s Voters Will Haunt Trump Until November
The former president crushed her among registered Republicans, but those who voted for her did so with a potent amount of side-eye for the MAGA king.
Win or lose, they still have a role to play.
Photographer: Joseph Prezioso/AFP via Getty Images
Former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley lost the New Hampshire primary to Donald Trump by double digits Tuesday. It's hard to foresee Haley competing more aggressively, or with better results, in any state in the near future. She hasn't yet quit the field, but it appears to have quit her.
Still, exit polls, along with dozens of interviews that I conducted with New Hampshire voters, suggest her campaign might have a lasting imprint just the same. Haley won independents by 24 points even as Trump crushed her among registered Republicans, winning them three to one. Republican voters love Trump. Some worship him. But those who supported Haley sometimes did so with a potent amount of side-eye for the MAGA king. In interviews as they left polling stations in southern New Hampshire, a few shook their heads in dismay about the state of the GOP —by which they meant the state of Trump. A "mess," one said. Others used the word "chaos"—as Haley often has—to describe the brand of politics they were fleeing when they embraced the former UN ambassador who served in the Trump administration.