Nikki Haley will lose the South Carolina primary this coming weekend.
Losing your home state is generally not a good way to run for president, especially when you’re already behind.
The former U.N. ambassador and South Carolina governor, however, is looking ahead — to Virginia, and some other states that vote in the March 5 Super Tuesday primary.
Haley has done best with college-educated and suburban voters, two demographic groups with whom former President Donald Trump has historically been weak, and Virginia has more of those than many other states. Virginia also has something else: An open primary, meaning anyone can vote. That’s because Virginia doesn’t register voters by party, something that Republicans don’t like, but a feature of Virginia’s voting system that opens the voting booth to independents and even Democrats.
I don’t see many Democrats willing to go on record as voting in a Republican primary — and those records are public — but I can certainly see the prospect of conservative-leaning independents showing up to express their preference for something other than another Trump vs. Biden election.
That seems to be what Haley is banking on.
Earlier this month, former Gov. Jim Gilmore, an ambassador under Trump, led a group of prominent conservatives in calling on Haley to drop out of the race. “For the sake of party unity, we call on you to get out of the race now,” they said in their public letter. “In 1964, then-governor Nelson Rockefeller stayed in the race against Sen. Barry Goldwater too long, even when it was apparent he had lost the nomination. As a result, Rockefeller ended up hated by the rank and file of the GOP. Do you really want to become the Nelson Rockefeller of the 21st century?”
Haley, though, has other plans. The Washington Post reported: “Haley’s advisers have frequently noted that 11 of the 16 contests on Super Tuesday have open or semi-open primaries in which the former South Carolina governor could expand the universe of voters beyond the Republican base, including key targets like Virginia, Texas, Maine, Massachusetts, North Carolina and Vermont.”
Once a frontrunner for a presidential nomination starts rolling through the primaries, no one has ever been able to stop them. I’m old enough to remember Jerry Brown trying to stop Jimmy Carter’s momentum in 1976. It’s unclear why Haley thinks she will be any different; it would seem she’s simply hoping to be the last one standing if and when Trump either implodes, or is hustled off to jail. The former hasn’t happened — people have been waiting for that ever since he came down the golden elevator in 2015 — and the latter, if it happens, might be too far off to do her any good. Then again, we live in strange and unpredictable times.
Haley does have a few things going for her that other candidates fighting rearguard actions against a frontrunner haven’t had. Maybe the U.S. Supreme Court will rule that Trump can be disqualified. (Prediction: The court won’t do that. Based on the justices’ questions at the oral arguments, I think more likely we’ll see a 9-0 ruling that forbids states from disqualifying him, but then a subsequent ruling that allows his criminal trials to go forward.) Maybe Trump will suffer some “senior moment” worse than the ones he’s already had that will cause Republicans to rethink the path they’re on (although Democrats haven’t shown much interest in ditching Biden for his age, either). Maybe Trump will get convicted of a felony before Election Day. Then again, maybe aliens will swoop down from the skies and carry Trump off to their planet.
I’d rate Haley’s chances of overtaking Trump — barring some deus ex machina intervention — as slim to none. The none part is self-explanatory so let’s take a closer look at the “slim.”
If Haley really wants to slow down Trump, she’s going to have to defeat him at some point. She needs a turnaround like Ronald Reagan had against Gerald Ford in 1976. Ford seemed to be pulling away when Reagan upset him in North Carolina. It was Reagan’s first primary victory and completely changed the dynamics of that nomination contest, which then went all the way to the convention.
Can Haley find her North Carolina?
Perhaps it really is in North Carolina, as the Post alluded to. Or maybe it’s Virginia. Americans for Prosperity keeps jamming my mailbox with mailers for Haley, so somebody thinks she’s got a chance to make a stand here. Let’s take a look.
A recent series of polls of Super Tuesday states found Trump is north of 80% on the Republican side in most of them, topping out at 88% in Oklahoma. The only Super Tuesday states surveyed where Trump wasn’t in the 80%-plus range were Massachusetts, North Carolina and Virginia.
Massachusetts was the closest, although close is a relative term. The Suffolk University poll put Trump up 55% to 38% over Haley. The Morning Consult poll has him at 69% to 28%. Neither of those meets our common understanding of “close.”
Let’s face it: Even if those numbers were close, Republicans are not going to be moved by Massachusetts, even if it is a Massachusetts Republican primary. I haven’t found any polling for Vermont, another Super Tuesday state, but Republicans aren’t going to be moved by Vermont, either.
That brings us to Virginia or North Carolina. A Haley victory in either of those would get more attention. Is that possible? Again, doubtful. Morning Consult has Trump up 78% to 19% in Virginia, up 76% to 23% in North Carolina.
If you’re Haley, though, you’ve got to make a stand somewhere, so what can history tell us about Virginia?
Here’s what catches my eye: In the 2016 Republican primaries, Virginia was Trump’s fifth-weakest primary state. He won Virginia, but with just 34.8% of the vote, with Marco Rubio taking 32.0%, Ted Cruz 16.69%, John Kasich 9.54%, Ben Carson 5.87%. Rubio had the same voter profile that Haley does; he ran best with suburban voters and more independent-minded voters. He tried to use Virginia as a place to set up a tripwire for Trump; he came close but not close enough.
Trump today is more popular with Republican voters than he was at this point in 2016. If Rubio couldn’t stop Trump in Virginia then, can Haley do so now? Unlikely, but if she were to try, the 2016 results tell her where to start.
Rubio ran best in Northern Virginia and the Richmond suburbs, with pockets of support around Charlottesville and Lynchburg. His best locality was Arlington, where he took 49.5%, followed by Charlottesville at 47.6% and Alexandria at 46.5%. These aren’t the usual places where we think of Republicans finding support, but there are Republicans in those places and Rubio won them. The problem was there just weren’t enough Republican voters in any of those places. Those percentages look impressive, but the actual vote totals weren’t enough for him. Arlington produced 10,970 votes for Rubio but Hanover County, less than half the size of Arlington, produced 8,589 votes for Trump. Alexandria produced 6,366 votes for Rubio, but Bedford County, half Alexandria’s size, produced 5,330 votes for Trump.
Trump’s biggest percentage in that year’s primary was in Buchanan County, where he took 69.7% of the vote. That didn’t involve many voters — 1,588 to 313 — but Trump’s 1,275-vote margin in Buchanan County was enough to wipe out Rubio’s margins in Chesterfield County, Prince William County and York County combined, with votes to spare. Those suburban margins for Rubio simply weren’t big enough to withstand the flood of Trump votes from elsewhere in the state.
This is the same phenomenon that Democrats sometimes discover to their chagrin — all those little rural counties can sometimes produce margins that wipe away their advantage in the urban crescent. That’s why I wouldn’t bet on a Haley upset in Virginia. She might, indeed, do well in some suburban localities, but she can’t be competitive unless she figures out a way to cut into those rural margins that Trump will roll up — and Trump will do a lot better in those places than he did in the 2016 primary.
I understand why Virginia might look attractive to Haley on paper, but it’s not 2016 anymore, and Rubio couldn’t make it work even then.
Open house in Roanoke
Cardinal is kicking off a series of open houses around our coverage area. On Thursday, we’ll be in Roanoke at Twisted Track from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. If you’re in the area, come by to meet some of the Cardinal team.
