After a series of second-place finishes on Super Tuesday, Republican former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley seems posied to end her presidential campaign.Her dropping out of the race would leave former President Donald Trump the only remaining major candidate in the running to obtain the GOP nomination.Hayley had a relatively poor showing on Super Tuesday itself, losing to Trump in 14 of the 15 voting states. She won in Vermont.Before Super Tuesday, Haley had amassed 24 total delegates over six primaries in states and US territories, including just three from her home state of South Carolina. In comparison, Trump amassed 122 over the same timeframe.After Haley lost to Trump in New Hampshire’s primary by just over 10 percentage points, she said she planned to continue her campaign “as long as I keep growing per state.”Haley said that in South Carolina — the state she grew up, went to college, and governed for 8 years — she needed to “do better than I did in New Hampshire,” or obtain more than 43.2% of the vote.She failed to hit that goal.Haley said she wouldn’t make any promises about her plans past Super Tuesday.”I have every intention of going to Super Tuesday,” she said. “Through Super Tuesday, we’re going to keep on going and see where this gets us. That’s what we know we’re going to do right now. I take it one state at a time. I don’t think too far ahead.”But Haley’s path to the nomination became increasingly fraught after failing to win enough voters on Super Tuesday and Trump gaining the vast majority of state delegates.Earlier in the race, Haley’s best bet to win the nomination was outlasting Trump in the hope he’d drop out of the race amid his slew of ongoing legal issues.But as Trump continues to win primaries and amass delegates, see his court cases moving at a turtle’s pace, and with his daughter-in-law positioned to possibly have a prominent leadership role within the Republican National Committee, Haley’s chance to replace her former boss as the nominee on the 2024 presidential ticket quickly slipped away.Haley would be an unlikely pick for Trump’s running mate since she’s spent months denigrating the former president for his advanced age and mental acuity. A more likely pick, as Trump himself previously suggested, would be Sen. Tim Scott, Vivek Ramaswamy, or South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem.
