So, Nikki Haley finally decided to play it safe. The former Republican presidential hopeful has announced that she would vote for Donald Trump in the November elections after bashing the former president left, right and centre throughout her entire primary campaign. In her first public speech as the Walter P. Stern chair at the conservative Hudson Institute think tank in Washington on May 22, the former South Carolina governor, however, stopped short of fully endorsing Trump.
It was Haley's first public appearance since dropping out of the Republican race in March and she spoke extensively on national security and foreign policy issues, including the Middle East, Russia and China. While she did not take Trump's name during the speech, it invariably came up in the Q&A session that followed. When asked whether Joe Biden or Trump would do a better job dealing with national security concerns, Haley said, "Trump has not been perfect on these policies. I’ve made that clear many, many times. But Biden has been a catastrophe. So I will be voting for Trump."
When Haley called off her primary campaign in March, there was no Trump endorsement. Instead, she had asked the former president to work hard and "earn the votes of those in our party and beyond who did not support him".
But Trump dismissed the idea and did not make any attempt to contact Haley or request her support. Still, Haley decided to make public her decision to vote for Trump possibly because the present realities of Republican politics clearly indicate that her future would be doomed if she completely alienated Trump’s MAGA base, especially in the 2028 Republican presidential primaries. Other potential 2028 contenders, like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu have already endorsed Trump.
With her half-hearted endorsement, Haley has made it clear that she will certainly be in the fray in the 2028 election cycle. And, as an olive branch to her moderate Republican support base, she articulated her policy differences with the Trump brand of Republicanism during the same speech, reiterating her preference for the Reagan style of governance, marked by domestic conservatism and an interventionist foreign policy. She also made it clear that her vote for Trump was not an endorsement of his policies. "I stand by what I said in my suspension speech," she said. "Trump would be smart to reach out to the millions of people who voted for me and continue to support me and not assume that they’re just going to be with him. And I genuinely hope he does that."
The Biden campaign, meanwhile, hopes that this particular cohort of centrist, pro-Haley Republican voters would vote for him in November, notwithstanding Haley's unflattering comments about the president's policies. Michael Tyler, who heads the communications director of the Biden campaign, said "nothing has changed" for the millions of Republican voters who continued to vote against Trump in the primaries and felt deeply about the future of American democracy.
Interestingly, the Haley coalition of independents, moderates and anti-Trump Republicans continues to vote for her in the Republican primaries, although she had dropped out of the race two months ago. For instance, in the latest primaries, she won 20 per cent of the vote in Maryland, 21 per cent in Indiana and 18 per cent in Nebraska. Across states, from deep blue to deep red to the battlegrounds, Haley is performing well in the largely upscale, highly educated, suburban counties.
In Pennsylvania, a crucial swing state with 19 electoral college votes, she did well in many Philadelphia counties, winning nearly a quarter of the votes in Montgomery, Delaware and Chester counties. In Georgia, she outclassed Trump in the suburban Cobb county, near Atlanta. Similarly, in Arizona, another key battleground, she won 21 per cent in Maricopa, the Phoenix county which is home to more than 60 per cent of the state's population. In the Midwest battleground of Wisconsin, she took close to 20 per cent in the counties near Milwaukee.
The Biden campaign has noticed in that in every battleground state, possibly except Nevada, the votes Haley polled in the primaries are higher than his victory margin in 2020. No wonder, the Biden team is looking at the Haley coalition as a key component of the vote bank it is trying to sew up for the fall, especially after losing some support from the young voters and the Muslim and Arab Democrats. A recent opinion poll by Emerson College showed that 63 per cent of Haley supporters said they would vote for Biden, while only 27 per cent expressed their support for Trump.
Biden himself has been actively wooing the Haley voters. “I want to be clear. There is a place for them in my campaign,” said Biden. The campaign is working on setting up a Republicans for Biden group to attract Haley voters in each swing state. It released a few advertisements showing Trump’s personal attacks against Haley, including the nasty “birdbrain” nickname he gave her during the primaries. Senior campaign officials are courting Haley's top donors. They would take heart from the fact that while Haley said he would vote for Trump, many of her key support groups, such as Republican Voters Against Trump, have condemned her announcement and indicated that they would continue their anti-Trump campaign.
Yet, Haley's semi-endorsement could also be seen as an olive branch to Trump, who has repeatedly said that Haley voters—whom he called a tiny fraction of the Republican electorate—would return to him by November. “Well, I got almost close to 90 per cent. She got very few voters. And those voters are all coming to me.” It could also open up the possibility of a Trump-Haley ticket, despite Trump's vociferous denials. A few days ago, Trump had written on his social media platform, Truth Social, “Nikki Haley is not under consideration for the VP slot, but I wish her well.”
Nothing, however, is impossible in politics. Having Haley in his corner offers Trump significant advantages, the only downside being the ire of the hardcore MAGA supporters. But those voters are never going to abandon Trump. Haley, meanwhile, could persuade her base of centrist Republicans to vote for their ticket. Even if she manages to convince a fraction of them to hold their nose and vote for Trump, it could make a big difference in November.