Haley won 1 in 5 Indiana Republican voters in the presidential primary. She left the race in March
INDIANAPOLIS — The spirit of Nikki Haley’s presidential campaign is generating significant support in state primaries despite her withdrawal from the race in March, shortly before Donald Trump clinched the Republican nomination.
The support for Haley — most recently in Indiana, where she received more than 21% of the vote on Tuesday — signals continued dissatisfaction among party voters with the former president. He’s racking up primary victories even though he recently spent much of his time in a New York courtroom facing criminal charges for paying hush money to a porn actor.
Haley, the former South Carolina governor and U.N. ambassador who qualified for Indiana’s election before dropping out two months ago, has not endorsed Trump.
A Haley campaign adviser did not immediately return a message seeking comment on the results.
Indiana Democrats did not have the option to “voluntarily” vote in their party’s primaries. Unease over President Joe Biden’s handling of the war between Israel and Hamas has sparked a protest voting movement in some states, raising similar questions about the strength of his support in November.
Haley’s support was strongest in Indiana’s urban and suburban counties. She won 35% of the vote in Marion County in Indianapolis and more than a third of the vote in suburban Hamilton County. As in other states, she did best in the most Democratic parts of the state.
The exception was Lake County, home of Gary, just south of Chicago. Haley won just 14% of the vote in Lake County.
Biden’s campaign attributed Haley’s performances in Indiana to Trump’s troubles in the suburbs and cited similar primary numbers in swing states like Georgia, Michigan and Pennsylvania. The president made an open appeal to Haley supporters to support him in November.
The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Two weeks ago, Haley received nearly 17% of the primary vote in Pennsylvania. She received similar support in Arizona just weeks after her departure.
Trump, who won every county in Indiana, dismissed Haley’s support Tuesday in an interview with WGAL-TV from Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
“All these people come to me,” he said.
In late January, Trump prematurely said Haley did not have enough signatures for the primary vote in Indiana. Although Haley received the minimum 500 signatures needed to get on the ballot in each congressional district, the margin was razor-thin in the 7th District, which includes Indianapolis.
Haley’s campaign was largely absent from the state, even during the race.
With eleven electoral votes, Indiana is far from the swing state that Pennsylvania is. Trump won Indiana by 16 percentage points in 2020.
Still, Haley’s support from 1 in 5 Republican voters raises questions about how they will vote in the fall. Before dropping out, she won nearly 27% of the vote in Michigan. Shortly after her departure, she received 13% of the votes from the Georgian Republican Party.
Haley, who ended her campaign in early March after losing to Trump in almost all Super Tuesday states, recently announced that she will join the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington. In her farewell speech a day after Trump’s big night, Haley declined to support him directly. She placed the onus on Trump to win the support of the moderate Republicans and independent voters who had supported her.
“It is now up to Donald Trump to earn the votes of those in our party and beyond who did not support him. And I hope he does,” she said. “At its best, politics is about bringing people into your cause, not rejecting them. And our conservative cause desperately needs more people.”
Trump was withering in his criticism of Haley, calling her “Birdbrain” in speeches to his supporters and questioning her decision to stay in the race.
Just before Super Tuesday, Haley said she no longer felt bound by a pledge that required all Republican candidates to support the party’s eventual nominee in order to participate in the primary debates.
She has said little publicly, but has continued to use her email contact, through her Stand for America PAC, to send updates on her Hudson appointment, as well as the return of her husband, Michael, from a US National Guard deployment. South Carolina Army he saw was stationed in Africa during much of its primary campaign.
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Associated Press writer Meg Kinnard in Columbia, South Carolina, contributed to this report.