On the surface, Donald Trump’s victory in the Republican New Hampshire primary seems like icing on the cake in his journey to be the Republican nominee.
Because despite a fairly strong showing from Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, we can’t ignore that no nominee has ever won both Iowa and New Hampshire and not been their party’s nominee in the general election, right? Right?
To take a statistic like that into consideration in this extremely unprecedented election would be naive. After all, we’ve also never had a presidential nominee running for a second term after being indicted on criminal charges, yet here we are. The rules and precedents weʼre accustomed to are clearly out of the window this time around.
Trump technically isn’t the incumbent president, but he’s the incumbent nominee, and his campaign is structured in essentially the same way as an incumbent president’s would be. To lose by almost single digits, even by incumbent nominees, has always been an immediate kryptonite for their campaign.
If Biden got 55% of the vote as the incumbent like Trump did in New Hampshire, that would be so unprecedented that there would almost certainly be calls for him to suspend his campaign immediately.
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In any case, Haley has no hurrying reason to back out of this election, given Trump’s 91 criminal allegations that pervade it. In an exit poll, 42% of the New Hampshire Republican voters said Trump wouldn’t be fit for president if he was convicted in any one of those allegations.
Not to overstate the obvious, but clearly, Trump would lose a fairly noticeable chunk of his support base if the 91 allegations lead to convictions. This is if he is even allowed to appear on the ballot, another case that is pending in many states.
Additionally, in the context of Trump’s TruthSocial posts in which he calls Haley a birdbrain and threatens anybody who wishes to support her, Trump appears infuriated that Haley hasn’t backed out. Haley staying in the race is annoying for her competitor, and that’s another aspect of her holdout working in her favor.
Presenting an alternate option to Trump — one of the most polarizing political candidates of all time — is good for the process. If Haley was concerned about her prospects of annoying Trump Republicans and hurting her position in the Republican party, she would have dropped out right after New Hampshire and perhaps even after her third place showing in Iowa.
Before this election year, a Plan B for an incumbent nominee just in case the Republicans campaign didn’t work out wouldn’t even be a thought. But in this situation, Nikki Haley appears to want to be that unprecedented Plan B. All factors considered; she might as well stay right where she is.
George is a junior in LAS.
