Nikki Haley’s Zombie Campaign Delivers Huge Blow to Trump in Indiana

Nikki Haley is still haunting Donald Trump’s bid for the White House.

Three months after abandoning her long-shot campaign, Haley still managed to nab 128,000 votes in Indiana’s GOP presidential primary on Tuesday, according to polling results compiled by Decision Desk HQ. That constituted 21 percent of the Republican vote in the Hoosier State, meaning one in five registered conservatives still preferred Haley over their party’s presumptive nominee.

It’s the continuation of an anti-Trump GOP movement that has persisted even as Trump mows down an empty political field. Last month, Haley also managed to pull a significant portion of votes in Pennsylvania’s GOP primary—more than 158,000 votes, or 16.6 percent.

On her exit from the race, Haley skirted actually endorsing Trump as Trump’s other GOP contenders did. Instead, the ambassador suggested it would be up to the former president to “earn” the vote of all Republican and independent voters.

“It is now up to Donald Trump to earn the votes of those in our party and beyond it who did not support him, and I hope he does that,” Haley said during a speech suspending her campaign in March. “At its best, politics is about bringing people into your cause, not turning them away. And our conservative cause badly needs more people. This is now his time for choosing.“

Haley’s ability to offer an intraparty alternative to Trump’s politics proved an incredible boon to her campaign. In January CBS News/YouGov matchups between the top Republican contenders and President Joe Biden, Haley came out head and shoulders above her competition, leading with 54 percent of the vote against Biden’s 45 percent thanks to support from moderates, independents, and voters with college degrees. That was a much wider margin than Trump, who was predicted at the time to win against Biden by just two percentage points with 50 percent of the vote.