Michigan is a general election battleground, and Nikki Haley, defeated again in South Carolina by former President Donald J. Trump, has been campaigning for months.
Mr. Trump cannot win in November, she argued, and will most likely say so again on Sunday at her rally in Detroit. Mr. Trump narrowly lost Michigan to Joseph R. Biden Jr. in 2020 after a presidential term that alienated independents and suburban women, the segments of the electorate that make up a strong portion of Ms. Haley’s small but not insignificant base. And in her campaign, the state was among more than a dozen that are crucial to her path to the nomination because it has primaries that are not limited to registered Republicans.
But the difficulty for Ms. Haley in Michigan, where the primary is Tuesday, is similar to that in early-voting states: She is running for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination, and the base is sticking with him. The strength she has shown among more moderate voters, even among Democrats, has not been enough to offset his significant advantage.
Richard Czuba, an independent pollster in Lansing, Michigan, said the state has a long history of Republican and Democratic voters crossing paths in presidential primaries to shake up campaigns and send a message. But he predicted Ms. Haley had little chance of doing so. The results of this year’s Republican primary in the state appear to be such a foregone conclusion, thanks largely to Mr. Trump’s dominance, that his pollster has even stopped bothering to survey voters, he added.
“There is no race,” he said.
Ms. Haley’s campaign began running the state’s first television ad just last week, targeting the Detroit area and purchasing a portion of what her officials said was a half-million dollars worth of statewide advertising. Her allied super PAC reported spending another half million on ads in the Michigan market since Saturday after her loss in South Carolina, federal records show.
Ms. Haley comes to the state with little to no momentum, even as she continues to fundraise. After another planned rally Monday in Grand Rapids, she is expected to hold additional fundraisers nationwide this week.
Her defeat in South Carolina on Saturday was her first ever in her home state, where she became the first female governor. Although she outperformed the polls there and received nearly 40 percent of the vote, she still fell short of her own benchmark: She did no better than the 43 percent support she received in New Hampshire in January. In her election night speech and in a video released Sunday in which she vowed to continue the fight, Ms. Haley argued that the percentages were about the same and presented herself as the voice of the people offering an alternative to a rematch between Trump and Biden seek.
Polls in the states she is expected to visit this week, including Colorado, Minnesota, North Carolina, Utah and Virginia, show her trailing far behind Mr Trump.
Hours before the final ballots were cast in South Carolina, Ms. Haley appeared to suggest that a détente might be on the horizon.
“We’re going to continue until Super Tuesday,” she told reporters on Kiawah Island, where she was voting with her family at a polling station in a gated community near her home. “That’s all I thought about the future.”
Michigan will only be awarded 16 of 55 delegates based on the results of its primary on Tuesday. The rest will be allocated at the party’s March 2 convention in a process likely to benefit Mr. Trump.
The state will provide an interesting backdrop. Mr. Trump focused on the Michigan election in his efforts to undermine the 2020 election. He won the state by nearly 11,000 votes in 2016 and lost it to Mr. Biden by more than 150,000 votes in his 2020 re-election bid. Mr Trump has since had a stranglehold on the state’s Republican Party as it has been caught in a political maelstrom of warring factions.
Dennis Darnoi, a longtime Republican strategist in Michigan, also rejected the idea that Democrats and left-leaning independents could help Ms. Haley if they have their own contest. Liberal groups have called for a protest vote against President Biden over his response to the war between Israel and Hamas. Democratic supporters of the president are fighting back.
Mr. Darnoi recalled that the Haley campaign initially appeared to be sending a lot of text messages to the state’s potential voters, but communication stopped and became sporadic. Their ground game was “pretty non-existent,” he said.
“Michigan primary voters are very supportive of Donald Trump. They are very happy to vote for him,” Mr. Darnoi said, adding that there seemed to be no room for others.
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2024-02-26 03:26:18
www.nytimes.com
