Nikki Haley fully earned her status as the last, best Republican alternative to Donald Trump.
But after a year of campaigning, Haley is bowing to the inevitable, becoming the final challenger to drop out of a primary that confirmed most Republicans didn’t want much of an alternative to Trump at all.
In a speech from her home state of South Carolina on Wednesday morning, Haley announced that she would end her campaign, but did not endorse Trump.
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"In all likelihood, Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee when our party convention meets in July," Haley said. I congratulate him and wish him well. Our country is too precious to let our differences divide us."
"It is now up to Donald Trump to earn the votes of those in our party and beyond it who did not support him," she continued. "I hope he does that... This is now his time for choosing."
Haley's announcement came hours after she was swept in all but one of the 15 primary contests of Super Tuesday. While she won tiny Vermont, she was blown out by wide margins in states like Texas, Alabama, and North Carolina.
Effectively ending the 2024 GOP primary, Haley’s announcement serves as the starting gun for the general election battle between Trump and President Joe Biden to rev up in earnest.
The former South Carolina governor, who framed her campaign as an answer for the large numbers of Americans who recoil at the prospect of another Trump-Biden contest, will now watch from the sidelines as that very fight plays out until November.
Given Trump and his camp’s penchant for openly insulting and mocking Haley, it seems unlikely she will play any meaningful role in his campaign or administration. Haley has also rejected the idea of running under a third-party bid backed by the centrist group No Labels.
While Haley harshly criticized Biden, her campaign may be remembered most for its effort to demonstrate that Trump’s grip on the GOP was not ironclad and that there could be a future for the party that is less MAGA and more Reagan.
In some ways, Haley proved the point. In contests from Iowa to Super Tuesday, sizable chunks of the GOP electorate—in some states, more than 40 percent—voted for Haley and signaled a desire to move on from Trump. (Haley won just two primaries: in the District of Columbia and Vermont.)
But without a clear path to victory, and her ability to pick up delegates curtailed by the Trump camp’s moves to stack the deck in his favor, Haley increasingly framed her campaign as an effort to give GOP voters a choice.
By February and early March, Haley began centering her messaging on how it was her “duty” to remain in the race, at some points even claiming she would remain in the race until all the primaries had been held. Increasingly, she began attacking Trump, who she served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, in sharper terms by questioning his cognitive ability and capacity to lead.
Appearing on NBC before Super Tuesday, Haley was asked if she believed Trump would follow the Constitution if elected—and responded, “I don’t know.”
It was a dramatic end to a campaign that Haley once said wouldn’t happen: In 2021, she insisted she would not run in 2024 if Trump ran.
But many aspects of Haley’s challenge encapsulated the key dramas of the 2024 primary—which will not go away so quietly.
In February 2023, when Haley was the first Trump challenger to enter the race, Trumpworld vowed to destroy her if she proved to be a serious contender. She spent months toiling away in near-obscurity, but as Ron DeSantis’ polling numbers steadily deflated, Haley began to pick up momentum once the debates started over the summer.
By the late fall and early winter, Haley was the only candidate to sustain any kind of polling increase over the early months of the campaign.
A former accountant, Haley boasted of “hoarding money” in her campaign’s coffers to go the distance against Trump. After DeSantis dropped out before New Hampshire voted—having done the opposite of hoarding money—she became the last challenger standing in the race.
But Haley campaigned in the home stretch of New Hampshire as if she were ahead, deploying an even more risk-averse strategy than the one that came to define her presidential bid. After a voter asked Haley about the cause of the Civil War and she failed to mention slavery, voter questions were quickly removed as a fixture of her events.
Although Haley scored the endorsement of New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, congressional endorsements and other signs of GOP official support were hard to come by. The week before Election Day in New Hampshire saw several Republican lawmakers Haley had previously supported—Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC), and Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC)—come out and endorse Trump.
Haley needed a strong performance in New Hampshire to keep her campaign alive, and her campaign was already looking ahead to future states in a memo released the day of the Jan. 23 primary.
“We’ve heard multiple members of the press say New Hampshire is ‘the best it’s going to get’ for Nikki due to Independents and unaffiliated voters being able to vote in the Republican primary,” Haley campaign manager Betsy Ankney wrote in the state of the race memo. “The reality is that the path through Super Tuesday includes more states than not that have this dynamic.”
Ultimately, New Hampshire was a high water mark for Haley’s campaign, as she carried 43 percent of the vote. But the prospect of a primary-shifting victory fell off the table, prompting her to slowly pivot to a strategy of simply competing for as long as possible.
Some Republicans responded positively: Haley’s campaign raised $12 million in the month of February, a notable haul that fueled her efforts in the South Carolina and Michigan primaries later in the month.
On Feb. 24, Haley indeed suffered a widely expected defeat in her home state of South Carolina, but she managed to put up a respectable 40 percent of the vote, further justifying her decision to stay in the race at least until Super Tuesday.
Amid a string of defeats in between, she won her first contest of the cycle on March 3: the District of Columbia primary, worth 19 delegates. She also picked up a single win on Super Tuesday, in Vermont.
Haley’s next step remains unclear. She could run for president again in 2028, facing a potential rematch against former rivals like DeSantis.
There was also speculation late in the race that Haley could have been positioning herself to be Trump’s running mate, a notion she eventually dispelled as forcefully as possible.
After a voter in Hollis, New Hampshire, asked if she would serve as Trump’s running mate, Haley said being vice president was “off the table” and she didn’t “want to be anyone’s” VP, according to Politico, who overheard the exchange.
Trumpworld’s frequent insults of Haley—who the former president slammed as “birdbrain”—would indicate that the South Carolina governor is unlikely to be a surrogate or booster of the Trump campaign this election season.
Still, despite it all, Haley has already made the case that Trump is a better choice than Biden—even if she claimed both are dangerous. In an interview with NPR from Feb. 22, Haley said, “I have a lot of concerns about Trump regaining the presidency. I have even more concerns about Joe Biden being president.”
While Haley ended her campaign on Wednesday, she indicated she would not vanish from the 2024 campaign.
“I have no regrets,” she said from Charleston. “And although I will no longer be a candidate, I will not stop using my voice for the things I believe in.”
