The Republican Primary Is Over

The Republican presidential primary is over. Nikki Haley, the last remaining challenger to Donald Trump, plans to leave the race today, according to reports in The Wall Street Journal and other outlets, clearing the way for the former president to claim the GOP nomination.

This moment marks an astonishing return for a man who left the White House in 2021 in disgrace. Trump had attempted to steal the 2020 election and encouraged a violent attack on the seat of U.S. government. Many prominent Republicans had renounced him, and his political career appeared over. Even when he announced his current candidacy, in November 2022, his prospects looked difficult. The primary has proved, however, that despite his struggles as president, his attacks on democracy, and his legal problems, GOP primary voters still love him. Now he heads into the general election with a good chance at becoming president once more.

Making sense of Haley’s campaign is less straightforward. Her candidacy lasted longer and saw more success than expected, but it also never posed a serious threat to Trump winning the nomination. Some of her run’s meaning will depend on what she does next—and whether Trump wins in November.

[Read: In South Carolina, Nikki Haley’s bill comes due]

Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, leaves the race a day after winning her first state primary, Vermont, on Super Tuesday. She also won the District of Columbia primary over the weekend. At the start of the campaign, she was considered a serious politician but not a serious contender. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis was expected to be Trump’s most formidable challenger. As the early campaign unfolded, DeSantis proved a clumsy campaigner, and other rivals, such as Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, never got any purchase. By the New Hampshire primary, on January 23, Haley was Trump’s main competition.

Haley had hoped to eke out a win in New Hampshire, but ended up with 43 percent of the vote, trailing Trump’s 54. Despite losing in her home state of South Carolina, she vowed to continue her race through Super Tuesday. She kept that promise, but would have faced futility and diminished financial support if she tried to stick around longer.

One big legacy of Haley’s campaign is demonstrating that though Trump is popular, his hold on the Republican Party is not complete. In contest after contest, Trump finished well ahead of Haley, though with less support than would be expected for an incumbent—a status he has tried to claim. Haley garnered enough support to show that some GOP voters remain resistant to Trump and would like another candidate. (Her numbers appear also to have been bolstered by support from Democrats choosing to vote Republican in open primaries.) It remains to be seen whether this squishy support will hurt Trump in November. If it does, Haley will have been a harbinger.

The other legacy of Haley’s campaign will depend on whether, when, and how she endorses Trump. Haley and Trump have a complicated history. Like most establishment Republicans, she was slow to warm to him in 2016, but then served as ambassador to the United Nations. She managed to exit his administration without recriminations, no small feat. Haley broke with Trump after January 6, but then sought rapprochement—an equivocation that gave little hint of the hard-nosed campaign she would eventually run in 2024.

Early on in the campaign, Haley—like most other Republicans—declined to criticize Trump directly, instead saying the country needed a new generation of leadership. As the field narrowed, she stepped up her attacks. She mocked him for his “temper tantrums,” skewered his memory after he confused her with Nancy Pelosi, and said she wasn’t sure that Trump would follow the Constitution if reelected. Last month she told reporters, “Everything that he has done, from the rants, to talking about revenge after New Hampshire, to everything in between—it is total chaos.” This past weekend on Meet the Press, Haley said that she no longer felt bound by a pledge to support the eventual nominee, because the Republican National Committee had changed leaders since then. Her campaign began hawking Barred Permanently T-shirts—a reference to Trump’s threat that she and her donors will be “permanently barred” from his world.

[Conor Friedersdorf: The strongest case against Donald Trump]

Is she, though? We’ve seen other Republicans seek reconciliation with Trump after criticizing him: Mitt Romney following the 2016 election, former Speaker Kevin McCarthy after January 6, and DeSantis after he dropped out of the 2024 race. Even Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is reportedly close to endorsing Trump, despite the former president’s long-standing attacks on him and his wife in deeply personal (and racist) terms.

For Haley to turn around and endorse Trump after all this would be a self–induced humiliation, a repudiation of what her campaign stood for and the reputation she has gained for political courage. Yet declining to do so would stand against all the normal instincts of a politician, and might prevent her from any future in Republican politics. (Hard-core Republican anti-Trumpers hope that Trump will lose in 2024, setting up a return to GOP normalcy in 2028—which Haley could lead. It’s possible, but not a great bet.)

A losing presidential campaign can be many things: an act of courage, an act of humiliation, a career ender, a springboard to future victory. Which of these ends up describing Haley’s run will depend on Trump’s choices and her own.