Sixty-nine days after she suspended her presidential campaign, former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley is still drawing a consistent one in five Republican primary voters away from the indicted ex-president Donald Trump.
Tuesday's primaries in Maryland, Nebraska, and West Virginia continued that trend, even though she has been nearly totally silent and even though Trump has already gained enough delegates to be the presumptive Republican nominee.
In Maryland Tuesday night, 47,597 GOP voters chose Haley over Trump, for a solid 20% of the vote. In Nebraska, Haley walked away with 36,872 votes, 17.9% of the total. And in West Virginia, she took 21,123 votes, although that was just 9.4%. (All vote totals and percentages are from the Associated Press via Google and are current as of time of publication.)
All three primaries were "closed," meaning open only to register Republican voters (Maryland and Nebraska) or registered Republicans and independents (West Virginia).
One week ago in Indiana the results were strikingly similar. 128,170 Indiana GOP primary voters – 21.7% – cast their ballot for the former South Carolina governor instead of the presumptive Republican nominee.
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“Unexpected warning signs for Trump in busy Indiana primary,” Politico reported last week, noting, “Nikki Haley’s performance in the already concluded presidential race could be a sign of trouble for Trump in more competitive states.”
Overnight, Politico reported, "Nikki Haley’s zombie presidential candidacy is still drawing a sizable slice of the Republican vote in the suburbs," in what it deems "Warning signs for Trump."
"Donald Trump showed weakness in the suburbs in Tuesday’s primaries, while Joe Biden’s problem with the protest vote appeared to fade," the news outlet noted. "It’s been a paradox for Democrats fretting about Biden’s standing in the polls: Republicans are more likely to say they’ll vote for Trump in general-election polling than Democrats are for Biden, but there are more protest votes in the primaries against Trump."
On Monday, before Tuesday primaries, Obama 2012 campaign manager Jim Messina summed it up: "Trump is failing to expand beyond hardcore MAGA base."
Pointing to Haley's 20%, Lisa Quigley, who spent more than a quarter century as chief of staff to two Democratic U.S. Congressmen, observed: "These are highly engaged voters, who showed up in a primary, to vote for someone who was going to lose. They did it anyway. This is happening everywhere. They are key to victory in Nov."
Fox News contributor Marc Thiessen, as far back as March, also pointed to Haley voters as the key to Biden winning re-election.
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"Nikki Haley won 2.9 million votes in the primary so far. Our Fox News voter analysis shows that somewhere between five in ten and six in ten of those Nikki Haley voters said they won't vote for Trump in November," Thiessen said, Newsweek reported. "If even a fraction of those voters deliver on that promise and stay home or vote third party or just split their votes or something, Trump loses."
Meanwhile, Haley has barely broken her near-total silence, and has not endorsed Donald Trump.
"During a private, two-day donor retreat in Charleston, South Carolina, the former South Carolina governor and U.N. ambassador thanked a group of around 100 donors and her team gave a presentation on her campaign’s fundraising and strategy," Politico also reported Wednesday. More importantly, Haley has not endorsed Trump nor offered the presumptive nominee any support – including her donor network.
