Nikki Haley claimed that Republicans “want to see us continue” her primary campaign against former president Donald Trump Saturday – despite polls indicating her imminent loss in her own home state.
Haley spoke to reporters as she wheeled her elderly mother into her local polling place on tony Kiawah Island to vote in South Carolina’s Republican primary.
“People want to see us continue this fight,” Haley, the Palmetto State’s former two-term governor, said. “And I think it’s a good thing when democracy reigns.”
“You might go to Russia and they’ll anoint kings there,” she said. “But here in America we have elections and people’s voices are heard, and how blessed are we that we get to do that.”
Trump, for his part, completely ignored Haley Saturday as he spoke at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C., before heading to South Carolina for a primary watch party in Columbia.
The former president has swept all of the race’s first four contests, making him the prohibitive favorite in Saturday’s primary – and prompting many Republicans to urge Haley to bow out.
A decisive win for Trump in Haley’s home state would all but guarantee his victory at July’s Republican convention, while a stronger-than-expected finish for Haley could boost her appeal for Trump-doubting voters.
But polls showed her trailing Trump by up to 28 points among likely South Carolina voters.
Haley vowed this week to stay in the race until the bitter end — even if she loses all 50 of her state’s convention delegates to Trump.
“On Sunday, I’ll still be running for president,” Haley said Tuesday in Greenville, SC.
“I’m not going anywhere,” she said, promising to campaign “every day until the last person votes” — and announcing a torrent of appearances in Michigan, Minnesota, Colorado, Utah, Virginia, Washington, D.C., North Carolina and Massachusetts between Sunday and March 2.
“I’ll keep fighting until the American people close the door,” Haley said.
But on Saturday, she sounded a more cautious note on her campaign’s future.
“We’re going to keep going all the way through Super Tuesday, that’s as far as I’ve thought in terms of going forward,” she said. “We’ll keep taking it one state at a time.”
Her South Carolina supporters expressed grim resolve in the days leading up to Saturday’s vote.
“I think she’s holding out for one of the cases against [Trump] to keep him from running for president, and she’s going to be the one that steps in,” one woman told The Post at Haley’s Greenville event.
Others wished for her to abandon the Republican Party altogether.
“My hope is that she would run as an independent,” Scott Hammond, another local voter, said at a Haley rally in Beaufort, SC on Wednesday. “I think it’s going to be difficult for her to beat Trump in the primary.”
But South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, who dropped out of the GOP presidential sweepstakes months ago and endorsed Trump following the former president’s decisive victory in the Iowa caucuses, urged Haley to end her White House bid “for the good of the country.”
“I made the determination myself back in November that America wanted someone that was more forceful, more provocative, and a little bit more rambunctious,” Scott — a former Haley ally who gained his Senate seat when she named him to replace retiring Sen Jim DeMint in 2012 — said Thursday.
Trump held 63 GOP delegates on Saturday before the South Carolina results were tallied, with 1,215 delegates needed to secure the party’s nomination — 874 of them up for grabs on March 5, Super Tuesday — and Haley trailing far behind at 17.
