Polls say Nikki Haley could beat Biden. But can she beat Trump?
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Don’t look now, but Nikki Haley seems to be having a bit of a moment. Two Fridays ago, at a town hall in central Iowa, the parking lot filled up 20 minutes before the event was set to start. The more determined late-comers drove their cars over the curb and parked on the grass. Inside a modest lodge hall, a group of volunteers scurried to set out additional folding chairs.
Before the past month or so, Haley drew crowds, but not like this. When a longtime Iowa political operative stood up to introduce her, he started by noting the newfound interest in Haley. “If we announced all the people who came on board in the last two weeks,” he said, “we’d run out of time.” When Haley came out, she started by asking how many people were first-timers at a Haley event. About 70% of the hands shot up. A few hours later, at a town hall 30 miles away, it was closer to 90%.
It’s not that Haley just recently burst onto the scene. She first grabbed the spotlight in 2011, elected as South Carolina’s first-ever female and first Indian-American governor. She was Donald Trump’s diplomatic appointee to the United Nations, one of the most coveted ambassadorial gigs available. And ever since launching her White House bid in February, she’s been on the short list of real contenders for the Republican nomination.
But that short list is constantly growing shorter, and skeptics would say it now starts and ends with Trump, the runaway favorite. The candidates know it, though they won’t readily acknowledge it (or acknowledge Trump, any more than necessary). In most national polls. Trump commands a 40-percentage-point lead; in Iowa, the first state to cast votes, Trump is up by 20.
The paradox? In poll after poll of a hypothetical general election, it’s not Trump who is best poised to take down President Joe Biden; it’s Haley, who hovers between second and third in most Republican primary polls.
It started in September: a much-debated CNN poll said Haley was the only Republican at the time who would beat Biden in a hypothetical head-to-head. But in the weeks that followed, it proved to not be a fluke. In October, a Fox News poll showed her leading Biden by four points. Last week, a Marquette poll showed her up ten.
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In Haley’s stump speeches, Biden is the clear target, and she is the proposed solution. All of the major problems facing America, she implies, are right in her wheelhouse. National debt? She’s an accountant by trade. Immigration? She’s visited the border, and as the daughter of Indian immigrants, she understands the system’s nuances. Caring for veterans? She’s married to a National Guard member, currently deployed in Africa. Wars in Europe and the Middle East? She negotiated with these countries at the U.N. Concerns about the age of the two leading candidates? She’s only 51 — a full three decades younger than the current president.
“You look at qualifications and experience, you look at electability, and she’s the best option,” Spencer Zwick, a veteran of the Mitt Romney presidential campaigns, and a recent Haley hire, told me.
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He’s not alone. Big-money donors are beginning to circle. Conservative pundits are flocking. And, of course, the polls — over and over, she seems like the best Republican choice, if the goal is to oust Biden.
But such calculations are a step beyond one very important hurdle. To get to the general election, Haley still needs to find some miraculous way to take down Trump in the primary. Voters seem to be keyed into this — toward the end of one of Haley’s town halls last week, an elderly man arose with a question. He thanked Haley for her message. “I think it really encapsulates what a lot of us believe,” he said.
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The man continued: “Our biggest concern is, how do we get through the elephant in the room?”
He didn’t have to say Trump’s name for everyone to know what he was talking about. Nervous, muffled giggles rippled through the room. “Because his electability versus your electability, there’s no question you would prevail,” the man continued. “But we need a strategy or tactics to get through that MAGA world.”
Haley smiled. “So, how do I win, right? That’s the question,” she said. The audience laughed. She mapped out a quick path forward: compete in Iowa, barnstorm New Hampshire, defend South Carolina. “It’s not that people don’t support Trump. They do,” she said. She shook her head. “But when they think of the chaos that follows …”
The GOP primary battle has been effectively Trump-versus-everyone else for several months. At first, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis showed promise, skyrocketing up the polls in early spring and looking like the the deliverer of a post-Trump Republican Party. Then the Trump machine roared to life, and by the end of summer, Trump was back on top. Each criminal indictment only seemed to solidify his support among a fragment of the base. By late August, nearly three-fourths of Republican voters said they were backing Trump to show support during his legal fights.
Other candidates showed some fight. Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy hovered between second and third place in a handful of national polls. Sen. Tim Scott seemed to check all the boxes, but never caught steam. He dropped out. Former Vice President Mike Pence, too.
But into fall, Haley emerged as the fastest-rising challenger. When Scott dropped out, pollsters suggested Haley would benefit the most. As the war in the Middle East — coupled with the ongoing war in Ukraine — overtook the political landscape, Haley immediately leaned into her experience at the U.N. To establishment Republicans, her neoconservative message was familiar, and drew a real contrast to Trump’s isolationist foreign policy: the U.S., Haley posits, has a responsibility to aid our allies abroad and fight terror.
At Haley’s campaign events, she’ll often spend the bulk of her time discussing foreign policy. We need to support Ukraine with ammunition and supplies, she says. We owe to Israel “whatever it wants,” and we must be wary of China, who now has the world’s largest naval fleet and is building ties with Iran and Russia, she continues.
It’s a gamble, as foreign policy rarely emerges as a major issue in presidential elections. “Voting ends at the water’s edge,” the adage says — though political scientists note there are exceptions when foreign policy becomes central to the national conversation, and when there is a clear partisan divide. Both qualifications seem to be holding true in 2024.
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If foreign policy is Haley’s biggest strength, abortion is her largest enigma. Haley calls herself “unapologetically pro-life” — not because the Republican Party tells her to be, but because she values life and because her husband was adopted. But she speaks publicly about a college roommate who was raped, and says she understands that not everyone sees abortion the same way she does. “I don’t hold it against anybody for being pro-choice,” she said, “just like I hope they don’t judge me for being pro-life.”
To social conservatives, that stance is disqualifying. At an event hosted by evangelical Christians in Iowa last week, she spoke about “my truth” on abortion, reminding attendees of the “overall goal” — saving as “many babies as possible” and supporting “as many moms as we can.” The DeSantis campaign quickly sent out a series of endorsements from Iowa pastors, each blasting Haley for her comments. “There is not my truth and your truth,” one said. “There is only God’s truth.”
Earlier that day, though, Haley landed her biggest abortion-topic win of the cycle: an endorsement from Marlys Popma, a pro-life crusader and ex-John McCain activist. At a town hall in Newton, Iowa, Haley gave her same pro-life pitch on abortion. Popma arose during the question-and-answer portion of the event. “I was an undecided voter when I walked in here today,” Popma said. “I am no longer an undecided voter.”
But it’s Trump, not abortion or foreign policy, that continues to loom largest in this race. Haley’s stance on aid for Israel or six-week bans will mean nothing to most Americans unless she finds a way to pull off an upset victory in Iowa, New Hampshire or South Carolina.
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More and more, big money donors are thinking that she can, and of all the Republican options, that she will. In October, Haley visited Utah, attending the E2 Summit in Park City — a gathering of affluent Republican strategists and donors, founded by Mitt Romney and now run by some of his ex-staffers. This year’s attendees had one major goal: to find a challenger to Trump they could coalesce behind and push across the finish line.
Three other GOP candidates — Pence, Chris Christie and Doug Burgum — attended, too. DeSantis was invited and chose not to show up. But Haley stole the show. Many attendees signed up to help her campaign on the spot. The event’s organizer, Spencer Zwick, announced last week that he was coming onboard, joining her executive team to help with finance and fundraising.
“At some point, you want to look back and say, ‘Gosh, we did everything we could do to stop Trump from being the nominee,’” Zwick told me. “At (the E2 Summit), Haley said, ‘We’ve got to get in the game.’ And I thought, she’s right.”
