January 24, 2024

Whether Joe Biden or Donald Trump wins the U.S. presidency in 2024 will likely depend on their getting the votes of many of those who backed Nikki Haley in yesterday’s New Hampshire Republican presidential primary contest. .

Exit polls show that Haley was backed by two out of three independent voters and six out of ten Republican and independent voters with college degrees. She also performed relatively well against Trump among women voters, roughly splitting their votes with him, compared to her getting 40% of the male votes.  

Haley has taken moderate policy stances, compared to her opponents in the Republican primary. She is trying to win over college educated Republicans – and independents - especially women. For instance, in August 2023, during a Republican primary debate, Haley said that contraception should be available to every woman and climate change is real, but that the U.S. needs to make China and India lower their emissions.

Haley has been critical of Trump. For instance, last year during a Republican primary debate, she said that then Vice President Mike Pence was right not to help Trump overturn the 2020 election. She added that Trump is “the most disliked politician in America. We can’t win a general election that way.”

Last week, Trump re-posted on Truth Social, a Gateway Pundit article stating that Haley is disqualified to run for President or Vice President, according to the U.S. constitution, since “her parents were not U.S. citizens at the time of her birth in 1972.”

Haley’s father became a U.S. citizen in 1978 and her mother in 2003, after her birth in the U.S. Eight of Haley’s Republican opponents, including Trump, raised the issue of her citizenship during her unsuccessful run in the 2016 presidential primary.

In the 2020 election, Democrat Kamala Harris’s eligibility for vice-president was also questioned on the same grounds of citizenship.

Trump is expected to be the 2024 Republican Presidential nominee, given that 80% of Republicans support him. Overall, presidential polls show a quarter of all voters, mainly blue-collar Republicans, support Trump as well as believe in conspiratorial theories. As a Trump supporter told CNN, they believe that Trump won in 2020 and that the January 6, 2021, riots in Washington DC were not caused by his supporters but by Federal government agents.

Typically, about 66% of voters participate in Presidential elections. So, Trump needs only about 5% more votes - not 8% - to win in November. This is because the winner is decided by a majority of the state electoral college votes, not a majority of the popular votes.  

To get the additional five percent of votes, Trump needs more support of college educated Republicans, women, and independent voters. In a recent University of New Hampshire poll, 28% of likely Republican voters said Trump hurt the country during his first four-year term, Reuters reported.

This November, as in recent U.S. presidential elections, the outcome will likely depend on who wins the swing states, especially in the Midwest, namely Pennsylvania (with 20 electoral votes), Michigan (16) and Wisconsin (10).

In 2016, Trump won the Presidency by securing only 78,000 more votes than Hilary Clinton in these states, and despite losing the popular votes . So, even though a total of 137 million votes were cast nationwide, a razor thin victory in three swing states is all that mattered.

In the 2020 election, Joe Biden won the three swing states by a total of more than 211,000 votes. This was largely due to support from independent voters, especially college educated whites and suburban women.  

Support for Haley, among independents, women and some Republicans in New Hampshire, reveals that Trump faces a tough challenge to beat Biden in November, based on the results of recent presidential elections, as many commentators have noted.

Haley is a former Governor of South Carolina (2011-2017) and a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, under President Trump (2017-2018).

Born in Bamberg, South Carolina, Nimrata (Nikki) Randhawa is one of four children of Ajit and Raj Randhawa, immigrants from India. Haley's first job was keeping the books for her family’s clothing store, starting at age 13. She earned a B.S. in Accounting from Clemson University, 1994.

Haley’s husband Michael Haley served as a Captain in the Army National Guard and was a combat veteran deployed to Afghanistan. They have two children, Rena and Nalin.

In 2018, while serving at the U.N., the Haleys had $65,000 in credit card debt, two home mortgage debts totaling about $1.5 million, and a line of credit bank debt of between $250,000 and $500,000, according to a financial disclosure form, The Washington Post reported.

Haley was earning less than $200,000 as U.N. ambassador, and her husband was making no more than $100,000 from his company, Ikor Systems, according to the Post. 

In 2019, after she left the U.N., Haley earned more than $250,000 in fees and stock awards as a member of the board of directors at Boeing. In 2022 and 2023, she earned more than $700,000 advising Prism Global Management, a venture fund, and, more than $2 million delivering a dozen speeches, including at banks, health care, industrial and aerospace companies, The Post reported.  

The 2024 U.S. presidential election will likely again be decided by whether Trump or Biden can motivate 100,000 to 200,000 additional independents, women and college educated Republicans to vote for them in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.

Given her support from such voters, Haley holds a bigger lead over President Biden – 53% to 46% - than Trump (50% to 48%), according to a CBS News poll released last week. 

The longer Haley contests Trump for the Republican presidential nomination, the higher the prospects of Trump losing support of voters who back Haley in the November Presidential elections.

“Donald Trump Sends Ominous Threat to Nikki Haley if She Wins,” was the headline in a Newsweek story today. If Haley won the Republican primary, Trump said, "she would be under investigation by those people (the Biden Administration) in 15 minutes, and I can tell you five reasons why already—not big reasons. Little stuff that she doesn't want to talk about."

Irrespective of their public statements, politicians are known to make deals with their opponents and those they dislike, driven by the urge to win or retain power.

Will Trump choose Haley as his running mate to try and gain more votes from among her supporters, especially in the swing states? Will Haley agree, since it may give her a big advantage in the contest for the presidency in 2028?

​​So far, Haley has said she is not interested in being Trump’s vice-presidential nominee. “I’m not interested in being vice president. I’m running to be president and I’m running to win and we will,” she recently told CBS News.

Americans who ignore Trump’s disregard for the rule of law will be “sleepwalking towards a dictatorship” if their apathy gets him re-elected, Liz Cheney told CBS News last month. She was on the show to discuss her book Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning, which has been a New York Times best seller for the past six weeks. A Republican, who lost her Congressional seat in Wyoming because of Trump’s opposition, she is the daughter of former Republican Vice President Dick Cheney.

After Trump wins the Republican primary, as is likely, will Haley join other Republican presidential contestants and most Republican elected officials in supporting Trump? Or will she, like fellow Republican Liz Cheney, continue to oppose Trump’s presidential candidacy? Will Haley, like Cheney, end up being marginalized in American politics, with little support in the Republican party?

"This race is far from over," Haley said yesterday, whose parents are Sikhs from India. "I'm a fighter and I'm scrappy and now we're the last one standing next to Donald Trump."

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