Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, ended her presidential campaign on Wednesday (6) and explicitly refused to support her rival, former President Donald J. Trump. Instead, she stated that the Republican candidate needs to earn the support of his voters, whom Biden claimed he would welcome with open arms.
“It is now up to Donald Trump to win the votes of those in our party who did not support him, and I hope he does,” she said in brief comments to her campaign team, “Now is the time to choose.”
The announcement from Haley effectively ended the Republican primaries, less than two months later, notably early. This came after she lost 14 of the 15 primaries held on Super Tuesday, making her quest for the White House practically mathematically out of reach.
In increasingly personal terms, Haley, who was Trump’s first ambassador to the United Nations, painted her former boss as an aging, mentally unhealthy agent of chaos, incapable of respecting veterans or the military and unwilling to be faithful to the Constitution.Super Tuesday Results
Donald J. Trump racked up victories across the country on Super Tuesday that brought a new mathematical certainty: He will secure the Republican Party nomination for the presidential elections in November 2024.
The majority of Haley’s primary voters said they were voting more against her opponent than for her, a sign of anti-Trump motivation that may last until November. And even though she was defeated overall, she led among moderate voters by nearly two to one. Her problem was that moderates represent only 20% of Republican voters. But in a tight general election, these voters could be much more important.
On the Democratic side, Biden also achieved victories by large margins across the country: Alabama, Maine, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, and Virginia, to name a few. By the end of the night, he swept all 15 states. It is worth noting that there is no significant candidate running against him as the incumbent president.
But once again, warning signs appeared for a president who is struggling to rally his entire party behind his candidacy. Nearly 20% of Democrats in Minnesota voted “Uncommitted,” in an apparent protest vote against Biden’s support for Israel’s military response to the Hamas terrorist attack on October 7.
It is not at all clear what voters like these will do in November. But if they support Trump, back a third-party candidate, or simply stay home, they could put Biden in a very delicate position in an election that promises to be quite close.Source: The New York Times