There have been some odd twists already in the 2024 presidential contest, and today I wrote about one of them at New York.

After a nearly monthlong drought in public polling of South Carolina, the state whose February 24 Republican primary could for all practical purposes clinch the GOP nomination for Donald Trump, we finally have some fresh data. And the new Washington Post–Monmouth survey shows Trump still has a big lead over Nikki Haley in her home state.

The former president is up by a 58 percent to 32 percent margin among voters interested in and eligible to (we’ll have more on that below) participate in the open Republican primary, and he leads Haley comfortably in voter enthusiasm and on multiple issue-position and candidate traits, including electability. Fifty-seven percent of poll respondents say Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election “due to voter fraud,” and 60 percent believe Republicans should stick with Trump as nominee even if he’s convicted of criminal conduct in connection with his efforts to overturn that election result. Trump’s favorable-unfavorable ratio is 66 percent to 28 percent; Haley’s is 45 percent to 41 percent. He leads among women as well as among men, and in every age category of voter. And Trump leads the former South Carolina governor by 60 points (77 percent to 17 percent) among those who call themselves “strong Republicans” and by 26 points (60 percent to 34 percent) among “soft” or “leaning” Republicans.

There is some good news for Haley in this poll: She slightly leads Trump (46 percent to 44 percent) among college graduates, and she leads him strongly (61 percent to 15 percent) among those who self-identify not as Republicans but as independents or as Democrats. These independents and Democrats make up 19 percent of the poll’s sample. Ifthey were a much bigger portion of the GOP primary electorate, Haley might have a chance at an upset win. That’s a very big “if,” though.

South Carolina has no voter registration by party. Registered voters can choose either party’s primary in any given election cycle (though the registration deadline for this year’s presidential primaries has already passed), but once they choose one, they are barred from the other until the cycle is over. As it happens, South Carolina’s Democratic presidential primary will be held on February 3. President Joe Biden has made a real effort to turn out the Democratic vote to resolve some doubts about his intraparty support in the state that gave him his big breakthrough in 2020. Nikki Haley really needs a lot of Democrats and Democrat-leaning indies to pass up that opportunity and turn out for her on February 24, says Monmouth polling director Patrick Murray:

“Haley’s hopes appear to hang on pulling in Democratic-leaning voters who would never support her in a general election but simply want to stop Trump. Our sampling frame for this poll did not include voters who have participated only in Democratic primaries. If a sizable number of those voters decide to skip this week’s primary and show up for the Republican contest instead, she could narrow the gap. It would remain a tough challenge, though, for her to actually close it.”

Keep in mind that for all of Nikki Haley’s self-portrayal as a beacon of civility and potential bipartisanship (at least as compared to the savage 45th president), she was the very partisan governor of South Carolina for six years after winning the election in 2010 as the candidate of the hard-core conservative DeMint-Sanford wing of the GOP and the high-profile tea-party protégé of Sarah Palin. As governor, she was known as a fierce advocate for big-business interests and for absolutely hating organized labor. Her one big enlightened gesture, the removal of the Confederate flag from the statehouse, was finally taken after a racist massacre at a Charleston church made the step largely noncontroversial.

For South Carolina Democrats to enter a Republican primary en masse to save Nikki Haley from a humiliating loss on her home turf would require either a great deal of amnesia or a fear of Donald Trump that makes all things possible. It would also represent a level of strategic voting that is rare in practice.

With three weeks to go before the GOP primary, we should be able to discern a major movement of South Carolina Democrats into the enemy camp if it happens. You can bet Team Trump will again warn (as it did prior to the New Hampshire primary) that Haley is inviting Democrats to “infiltrate” the Republican contest because they fear the former president. Sooner or later, of course, if Haley is to remain in the contest, she’s going to have to beat Trump among the “strong Republicans” who will dominate most primaries down the road. For the present, though, she needs a miracle and a lifeline from the other side of the partisan barricades.

One of the more fascinating battles in politics is between the centrist Democratic group Third Way and the allegedly centrist non-partisan group No Labels, which I examined carefully at New York:

The ideological polarization of the two major political parties that took place during and after the civil-rights era fed a partisan polarization as voters began to sort themselves out into dual tribes with contrasting points of view on a broad range of issues. As interparty disharmony increased, it was inevitable that there would be a widespread craving for more cooperation across party lines. That has been the mother’s milk of “centrism” in both major parties (more prevalent among Democrats than Republicans, to be sure) and absolute rocket fuel for bipartisan and nonpartisan organizations like No Labels. That group has flourished since its founding in 2010 as a vehicle for Republican and Democratic centrists to signal their interest in, and in some cases actually work on, joint policy projects, particularly in Congress (where it sponsored the bipartisan House Problem Solvers Caucus).

In the Trump era of hyperpolarization, the craving for bipartisanship on which No Labels feeds has intensified along with voter fatigue with the traditional parties and the gerontocracy that often seems to rule them. Unfortunately, this development has seduced the leadership of No Labels to consider a fateful plunge into its own electoral project at the very highest level: a presidential candidacy in 2024. A significant segment of its original “centrist” supporters and sympathizers — especially those whose “label” being put aside was the Democratic donkey — has objected vociferously. These include the founder and CEO of the once-formidable Democratic Leadership Council, Al From, and, most of all, the organization that is in many respects the DLC’s successor, Third Way, which has become the Paul Revere of Democratic opposition to No Labels. Centrist policy intellectual and former No Labels booster Bill Galston has best explained his and other Democrats’ estrangement from No Labels, as reported by David A. Graham:

“’The initial premise was: We have no choice but to make the two-party system better,’ the political scientist William Galston told me. Galston helped found No Labels, but he parted ways with the group in 2023 because he feared that a presidential bid would help reelect Trump. ‘The current effort rests on a different premise altogether — namely, that we have to go outside the two-party system to make things better,’ Galston said.”

Running its own presidential candidate arguably makes the nonpartisan No Labels a third party, even though the group rejects that … label. In theory, the idea is to jolt Democrats and Republicans into cooperation by beating them to the White House, presumably just once. The premise seems to be that a No Labels president — or, in some iterations of the group’s shadowy 2024 plans, a president who takes office via a deal with No Labels after its candidate has denied either party an Electoral College majority — will retreat from the field after forcing the old parties to play pretty with each other. That scenario requires a degree of trust in No Labels’ leaders that they really haven’t earned, as Graham observes:

“No Labels isn’t offering much information at all about how it will choose its ticket without a primary. The group says it will make the decision about whether to field a candidate after Super Tuesday, based on an analysis of whether such a candidate would have a real shot. Many experts outside No Labels see such a calculation as basically impossible …

“Assuming No Labels does decide to nominate a candidate, how will the group choose that person? That’s a mystery too. Originally, the group planned an in-person convention of supporters this April in Dallas, but in November, it announced plans to hold the convention virtually instead. But No Labels hasn’t said what such a convention would look like or what role delegates would play in choosing the candidate.”

Based on Joe Biden’s own centrist credentials and the tight-knit Republican-base vote that Donald Trump commands, most of No Labels’ Democratic detractors echo Galston’s fear that any candidate sponsored by the group will take more votes away from the incumbent and pave the way for another Trump plurality win even more egregious than his 2016 election. And No Labels’ secrecy about the donors who have paid for its extensive ballot-access operation (which has succeeded in 14 states despite no one knowing the identity of its candidate) has fed the suspicion that a Trump victory could be the whole idea.

Even if you don’t believe the No Labels 2024 initiative is a sinister MAGA plot and instead think it’s a well-meaning but dangerously naïve undertaking (as Third Way’s leaders suggest), it’s just bizarre that its plans have gone so far without a clear plan of what they will actually produce. But there are signs the wheels are falling off this particular bandwagon, as CNN’s Edward-Isaac Dovere reports:

“Larry Hogan, the Republican former governor of Maryland, quit the No Labels board last month over frustration that power and information were being hoarded by group leadership — and not to, as reported elsewhere, clear the way for a presidential run of his own.

“’It’s been far less organized than he expected it to be’ and ‘he doesn’t see a plan coming together,’ a person familiar with Hogan’s thinking told CNN. ‘You don’t know where this train is going, and you’re signing up for something you didn’t necessarily sign up for.’

“Asked for his own assessment of the No Labels plan, [West Virginia Senator Joe] Manchin told CNN on the road in New Hampshire as he kicked off a national tour, ‘I don’t think anybody knows. I think it’s changing day by day, hour by hour.’

That’s significant since Hogan and Manchin are the two names mentioned most often as potential No Labels presidential candidates. Pretty clearly the organization has veered off course, arguably because it tried to change missions overnight. Historically, those who try to harness discontent with major political parties seek to break the mold by creating their own “third” party in hopes of realigning politics or actually aim at “reforming” one of the old parties in a more productive direction. No Labels’ ostensible strategy of knocking Democratic and Republican heads together and then fading away makes no sense and thus naturally arouses suspicion. It’s probably going nowhere fast in 2024, and that’s a good thing even for those unhappy with the Democrats and the Republicans. No Labels lost its original purpose and as a result has lost its soul.

I try not to share too much content here that’s strictly about intra-Republican political matters. But I’ll make an exception today because Nikki Haley’s shape-shifting habits are relevant to political deception in every kind of election, as I explained at New York:

During her aggressively upbeat speech on primary night in New Hampshire, presidential candidate Nikki Haley obliquely acknowledged the fact that the overwhelming majority of Republican-elected officials in her home state of South Carolina — the next and perhaps final stop of the competitive phase of the 2024 GOP nomination battle — are backing Donald Trump.

“Every time I’ve run for office in South Carolina, I’ve beaten the political Establishment. They’re lined up against me again, that’s no surprise,” Haley said. “But South Carolina voters don’t want a coronation, they want an election.”

It was a bit of an odd note for a politician who was twice elected governor of the Palmetto State. Yes, it’s doubtless been difficult for Haley to watch her former home-state allies — including her successor, Governor Henry McMaster, and the man she appointed to the U.S. Senate, Tim Scott — climb aboard the Trump Train. But without question, it’s Trump’s intense popularity in South Carolina, not some sort of “Establishment” disdain for Insurgent Nikki, that has led to her embarrassing lack of elected official support back home. There haven’t been any public polls from the state since early January, but Trump’s smallest margin over Haley during the entire cycle has been 26 percentage points, and he’s at 52 percent there in the RealClearPolitics averages. It’s no surprise: Trump won the state’s primary in 2016, beating out Marco Rubio, the preferred candidate of the South Carolina Republican “Establishment” at the time (he was endorsed by both Scott and Haley).

So perhaps Haley has no real choice but to seek to re-acquire the mantle of the scrappy underdog fighting “the man,” a role she really did assume back in 2010 in her first race for governor. That contest, in which she came from the back of the pack to win a tightly contested Republican primary and runoff (and then a tough general election fight, a bit of an afterthought in that deep-red state) is now overtly becoming the model for Haley 2024 in South Carolina, as The State reports:

“’She’s always been the outsider, she didn’t have endorsements in 2010, she doesn’t have them now, she is running as the outsider anti-establishment candidate, same as 2010 and I think ultimately they have their endorsements and their Washington insiders and that’s totally fine,’ said [Olivia] Perez-Cubas, spokeswoman for the Haley campaign. ‘Nikki is focused on earning the votes and supporters and everyday Americans.’”

There are some big problems, however, with that analogy, other than the obvious fact that Haley was an obscure state legislator in 2010 and has been a dominant figure in Palmetto State Republican politics ever since. In 2010 Haley was the candidate of the hard-core Tea Party conservatives in what might be called the Jim DeMint–Mark Sanford wing of the GOP, systematic ideologues often at odds with the former Dixiecrats who were slowly dying out. Sanford’s bizarre 2009 extra-marital affair conducted under the guise of “hiking the Appalachian Trail” made him damaged goods in 2010, but his estranged wife, Jenny, was an important force behind Haley’s ascent. Her real stroke of luck, however, was becoming the very favorite candidate of the then-red-hot right-wing folk heroine Sarah Palin, the veritable Queen of the Tea Party, who designated Haley a fellow Mama Grizzly, as the Washington Post recently recalled:

“Former congressman J. Gresham Barrett (R-S.C.) still remembers what he calls the ‘seismic’ quake that upended the 2010 South Carolina Republican primary for governor. …

“[F]ormer vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin came to town, holding a raucous rally for Haley on the steps of the South Carolina State House in downtown Columbia.

“’We felt a tectonic shift, honestly, to the point where we actually went back into the field the next week, because it was that earth-shattering,’ Barrett said.”

Palin’s high-profile backing perfectly set up Haley to campaign as the “conservative reformer” battling the state party’s “good ol’ boys” (code for former Democrats who had drifted into the GOP in opposition to civil rights measures). She beat Barrett in a runoff in which she won crucial backing from third-place finisher Henry McMaster (the same Henry McMaster who’s being deemed an “Establishment” figure for backing Trump), and the rest was history.

So how does this translate to 2024? Not very well. Trump is now the candidate of the right-wing insurgents, and he’s in the process of executing a hostile takeover of the Republican Establishment, with last-ditch resistance from beltway types and donors who are almost invariably backing Haley. In New Hampshire, Haley’s very best state going into the January 23 primary, Trump won (according to the exit polls) 71 percent of self-identified conservatives, and 89 percent of those who describe themselves as “very conservative.” These are the kind of Republicans Nikki Haley and Sarah Palin were appealing to in 2010. They are now populating the MAGA movement, which in many respects is the Tea Party on steroids and with a very bad attitude.

You can’t blame Haley for trying to make a virtue of necessity by treating her lack of elite and popular support in South Carolina as the product of an arrogant Establishment she is bravely battling, just as she did 14 years ago. To a limited extent, it might even work. A wild card in her 2010 victory was an ugly spate of racist and sexist comments and rumors about her (most notably undocumented claims of extramarital sexual activity) that reinforced her image as a courageous woman of principle fighting piggy rednecks. Trump’s strange decision to savage her personally for refusing to fold her tent, along with his penchant for racist nicknames for her, will bring back some unsavory Palmetto State memories of those early smears.

But in that respect as in others, Haley cannot expect Trump to win this or any other primary for her with his excesses. If nothing else, Trump’s crude antics will remind primary voters that no matter how many endorsements he gathers from elected officials, he’s the unrivaled King of Chaos, and his “establishment” is based on the very ideological extremism that gave Nikki Haley’s political career its first big lift.

 

After watching the returns from New Hampshire on the evening of January 23, I offered a take on the rogue Democratic primary at New York:

Despite lots of irresponsible talk about Joe Biden potentially getting ambushed in an officially unauthorized New Hampshire primary where he wasn’t on the ballot, the president brushed aside two opponents and won a primary for the first time in this influential state. He won even though he didn’t campaign there and even though Democrats had to go to the trouble to write in his name. And he won about two-thirds of the vote against two challengers who essentially camped out in New Hampshire, hoping lightning would strike. Some predicted he would underperform and get knocked out of his reelection race like Lyndon Johnson in 1968. Instead Biden called into question whether Dean Phillips and Marianne Williamson have any reason to continue their unsuccessful candidacies.

In fact, Biden won a double victory in New Hampshire. Aside from winning his own primary, his general-election strategy is being vindicated by the continuing success of his preferred general-election opponent, Donald Trump. No, Trump didn’t (or so it seems) knock Nikki Haley out of the Republican race. But the former president’s nomination seems really inevitable now. And the fact that he may have to grumpily stalk the primary campaign trail for at least a month before it’s official will give the White House fresh opportunities to remind voters (including Haley supporters) of the fateful choice they will have to make in November.

Meanwhile, Joe Biden can move on to his first official, non-rogue primary in South Carolina, where Democrats will vote three weeks before the Trump-Haley battle there. The Palmetto State Democratic primary should be a real love-in as Joe Biden campaigns among the voters who absolutely saved his bacon in 2020 and put him on the path to the presidency. The contrast with the glowering Trump and the Republicans who are on a white-knuckle ride with him should be richly rewarding for the 46th president.

It’s not unusual for Donald Trump to just make up stuff that’s not true, but in this case I wanted to set the record straight at New York:

In her very long-shot effort to get in the way of Donald Trump’s third consecutive Republican presidential nomination, Nikki Haley really needs to overperform in the New Hampshire primary on January 23. Fortunately for her, it’s probably her best state in the entire country. For one thing, she’s spent a lot of time there and is benefiting from the strong support of popular lame-duck governor Chris Sununu. But more basically, the GOP primary electorate is relatively light on Evangelicals (a mere 25 percent in the 2016 presidential primary), and GOP moderates are a small but visible breed (27 percent in 2016). Plus, independents (42 percent of GOP primary voters in 2016) are allowed to participate in the Republican contest.

Trump has seized on this last data point in an effort to discredit Haley’s showing on the chance that she really does beat expectations, as the Washington Post reports:

“Trump argued during his rally here [in Portsmouth] that Haley is ‘counting on Democrats and liberals to infiltrate your Republican primary.’

“’A vote for Nikki Haley this Tuesday is a vote for Joe Biden and a Democratic Congress this November,’ Trump said. (He went so far as to suggest that Haley would abandon her party, stating at one point: ‘I actually think she might go to the Democrat Party.’”)

As is often the case with the 45th president, he didn’t exactly get his facts right. Registered Democrats cannot vote in the GOP primary in New Hampshire, and they couldn’t even switch party registration after the October 2023 deadline (reportedly 4,000 voters — or less than 2 percent of the anticipated primary vote — did so). Still, as Ben Jacobs noted at New York recently, there has been an organized effort to get Democratic-leaning independents to vote against Trump in the GOP primary, and according to the polls, they are contributing to Haley’s base of support.

A new St. Anselm College poll this week shows Haley leading Trump by 52 percent to 37 percent among registered independents, who represent 47 percent of likely Republican primary voters (Trump leads Haley 65 percent to 25 percent among registered Republicans). Ten percent of likely GOP primary voters, moreover, told the pollsters they self-identify as Democrats, and among them Haley wins 90 percent.

There’s nothing illegitimate, much less illegal, about independents voting in a partisan New Hampshire primary (six other states allow independents to vote in either party’s primaries, and another 16 states — including South Carolina, which is holding the next big primary on the calendar — don’t have registration by party, which means you just show up at the polls and pick a primary). And a significant majority (81 percent, according to a Pew study in 2019) of independents nationally lean strongly toward one party or another. So there’s no “infiltrating” going on in New Hampshire, and the vast majority of GOP primary participants will likely support the party nominee in November. Team Haley, of course, will argue that her popularity among non-party-affiliated and even some self-identified Democratic voters is a token of how well she would do in a general-election contest with Joe Biden.

Having said all that, Trump’s superior performance among self-identified Republicans could pay off for him down the road in states with closed primaries in which independents — no matter which way they lean — cannot vote. That’s assuming he hasn’t already clinched the nomination much earlier, which will certainly happen if he beats Haley in New Hampshire and then in South Carolina, as appears likely. That St. Anselm poll showing Haley doing so well among independents also gives Trump a 14-point lead overall. To invert the old Sinatra song, if she can’t make it there, she can’t make it anywhere.