06 March 2024 , 11:31
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Nikki Haley, the Republican party presidential candidate hopeful, has reportedly pulled out, suspending her 2024 campaign after a series of disastrous losses to Donald Trump on Super Tuesday.
Sources have said Haley plans to suspend her presidential primary bid in a speech on Wednesday morning. It's expected she will make a brief appearance today to speak to reporters in Charleston, South Carolina, at around 10am ET (3pm GMT), where it's believed she will not endorse Trump but instead encourage him to earn the support of those who had backed her.
It leaves former President Donald Trump as the last remaining major candidate for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. When she joined the race in February 2023, she was Trump's first significant rival, and spent the final phase of her campaign aggressively warning the GOP against embracing Trump, arguing he was too consumed by chaos and personal grievances to defeat incumbent President Joe Biden in the November general election.
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PORTLAND, MAINE - MARCH 3: Republican presidential candidate, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley speaks during a campaign stop at the Portland Elks Club on March 3, 2024 in Portland, Maine. Haley is visiting several states ahead of Super Tuesday on March 5. (Photo by Scott Eisen/Getty Images) (Getty Images)The former South Carolina governor and Trump's UN Ambassador during his time in office fought hard to try and claim the Republican nomination for the 2024 election, even refusing to drop out after she lost in her home state to Trump. It's been a campaign littered with defeats, with her shining light coming in DC - a state she was expected to win anyway, where she defeated Trump by almost 30 points.
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Following her loss in South Carolina, Haley promised supporters she would keep fighting, as she and her team tried desperately to turn around her campaign and close the gap between her and the controversial businessman. At the time, she said she would see the race through to the end as defeating Trump has been one of the main goals and focuses of her campaign.
Trump, she said, is far too old to be running — he's 77, turning 78 in June, and would be 82 by the time he left office. But that's still not as old as current President Joe Biden, a Democrat, who is 81 and would be 86 by the time he leaves office if he's reelected to a second term through 2028. He is the oldest standing president in American history. Haley, on the other hand, is just 52 and would be 56 or 57 when she left office.
After more losses in Michigan, Idaho, Missouri and, just yesterday, North Dakota, Haley revisited that promise, telling her supporters instead that she would at least see her campaign through to the end of Super Tuesday and then assess the results to determine whether she would stay in the contest or not.
Trump ultimately swept Tuesday's primaries, which took place in Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia and American Samoa. He's now only a few hundred delegates away from having enough to clinch the Republican Party's nomination, which requires a candidate to acquire 1,215.
Nikki Haley was Trump's sole Republican rival left for the presidential candidacy (Getty Images)Haley ended up winning Vermont, which garnered her 17 delegates, but Trump won in all the other states, with most of the races called quickly, mere minutes after the vote counts began.
Before Super Tuesday, Trump boasted 276 candidates, while Haley only had 43. A few went to other candidates like Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy, who dropped out after the first couple of contests in Iowa and New Hampshire after they drastically lost to both Trump and Haley.
After Super Tuesday, Trump had 995 delegates compared to Haley's 89. Even if she pulled through and won most of the states slated to hold their primaries after Tuesday, she'd be hard-pressed to acquire the necessary candidates to overcome Trump's drastic lead. And so, Haley dropped out.