You're a podcast listener, and this is a podcast ad. Reach great listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Lipson Ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements, or run a reproduced ad like this one across thousands of shows to reach your target audience with Lipson Ads. Go to LipsonAds.com now. That's L-I-B-S-Y-N-Ads.com.
I want everyone to know that because we're being made to work on a Saturday night, I wore my Ice Spice t-shirt. Does anyone know what that means? No, Galen. Okay, I have to stand up in order for you to see it, but... For those of you who can't see it because you're listening, it says, hot person at work.
- Hello and welcome to this late night, Saturday night edition of the FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast. I'm Galen Druk. It is about half past 9:00 p.m. and the results have been called in the South Carolina Republican primary.
to pretty much no one's surprise, Trump won. But it looks like Haley is overperforming her polls there. At the moment, Haley has about 39% support to Trump's 60-some percent support with 80% of the expected votes in. And if you're going off of the projected estimates at The New York Times, they're suggesting that it is going to be a 60-40 split at the end of the night. We can get into whether or not
We agree with that. But going into tonight, Nikki Haley was polling at around 33%, so a little bit better than she expected to do. We've already heard from both Trump and
And Haley, Haley quickly conceded but said that she's staying in the race to give voters a choice. It sounds like at least through Super Tuesday. We're going to talk about a couple things tonight. First of all, the blocking and tackling of what the results showed, trends across different parts of the state, different demographics. Whether or not 60% support in South Carolina is a good showing for Donald Trump.
We're also going to get to what I think is maybe the most interesting question in the Republican primary right now, which is not who's going to win. We all know who's going to win. It's Donald Trump. We sort of expressed that on a podcast weeks ago at this point, maybe even a month ago at this point. The question is, what is Nikki Haley doing? What is her goal by staying in the race? We're going to talk about that and some other things. And here with me to do it is senior elections analyst Nathaniel Rakich. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you.
Hey, Galen. How's it going? How do you feel about giving up your Saturday night for, well, podcast time? This is exactly how I want to be spending my Saturday night. I've got elections. I've got my friends. This is the dream. Oh, does this make me a friend? Have I made it into the club of Nathaniel Rakich friends? Oh, I was talking about Jeffrey and Kaylee. Oh.
All right. And with that, senior elections analyst Jeffrey Skelly, welcome to the podcast. How's it going? Hey, Galen. Can we be friends at least? Yes. Yes, Galen. We are friends. Okay. All right. Solid.
to introduce another friend, politics reporter Kayleigh Rogers, who is officially back from maternity leave. So congratulations, Kayleigh, on the little one and welcome back to FiveThirtyEight. Thank you. Good evening. Up past my bedtime. I know, especially props to you doing a late night podcast with an infant.
Yeah, it's actually really not that late. So anyway, we're glad you're here. So Jeffrey, you have been digging into a lot of the different counties, precincts. We expressed on the podcast on Thursday that South Carolina is your second home state. So what trends did you notice overall in the results tonight? Well, honestly, I'd say they kind of went as expected. I mean, we can talk about
polling average and where the results are right now a little bit more. But broadly speaking, I kind of had like a back of the envelope accounting maneuver coming into tonight where I added up
Based on the 2016 Republican primary, I was like, all right, maybe a decent way of looking at this and the splits within the Republican Party were to add up Donald Trump's 2016 vote share in the South Carolina primary, Ted Cruz's vote share, and Ben Carson's vote share.
And then for Haley, say, well, okay, let's add up Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, and John Kasich from 2016 in South Carolina. Tricky, tricky. And you got about a 62 to 38% result in favor of Trump if you did that.
And right now, not to say it will end up exactly this way, but right now it's 60 to 39 in favor of Trump, 60% to 39%. And if you go county by county, a lot of them just about hit. Some others, there's a bit more variation, but –
At least from a starting point to understand what was probably going to happen tonight and given what we were seeing in the polls with Trump ahead. And given that we knew that the electorate in South Carolina was very likely to be friendlier to Trump compared to New Hampshire, you were going to have more people who identified as Republican voting in the Republican primary. You were going to have more people who described themselves as very conservative voters.
And fewer people who describe themselves as moderate. And you were very likely to have a majority of the primary electorate identify as white evangelical Christian. And all of those are stronger points for Trump. And that is exactly what has panned out.
So, Jeffrey, are you saying that you developed a mechanism for forecasting the South Carolina Republican primary that was more accurate than the polls? No, I don't want to say that. Sounds like that's what you did. No, I think I think it was a back of the envelope thing that I might get lucky on.
Because again, if you go county by county, it's certainly not exact by any means. Have you done that for any other states? Yeah, actually. I've been using something of that approach in each state to try to – it's just like, again, like a starting point for understanding like what might be a reasonable benchmark to –
to expect, especially in like New Hampshire, just because it seemed like that was the state where Nikki Haley might have the best chance of winning. So I kind of use that as a starting place for developing like a rough benchmark, but then Trump ended up winning by 11. So it wasn't quite close enough to make any of that really all that worthwhile. All right, Kayleigh, get in here. What was your takeaway from the night?
Yeah, I mean, that sounds exactly right. I know, you know, I was reading the piece, Jeffrey, that you wrote about the electorate in South Carolina, why it's like particularly well suited for Trump. And all of the points that you mentioned are, you know, exactly what we saw when they actually came out to vote as far as.
You know, the biggest chunk being white evangelical Christians, a very significant portion describing themselves as very conservative as opposed to simply conservative. Everything that we kind of expected is exactly how it played out. And that's why, you know, Trump came out so strongly on top. I do think, you know, as you mentioned off the top there, Galen, the fact that
Haley maybe is going to get in around 39, 40 percent. It's a little better than the polls are showing heading in. And she certainly highlighted that in her speech at the end of the night. It's kind of an explanation of why she's not quite throwing in the towel yet. So some sort of interesting things, but a lot of what we expected. All right. We got some big questions to tackle. But Nathaniel, why don't you take the chance to give us your takeaway from the night?
The electorate, according to the exit polls, 41 percent identified as very conservative. Those people went for Trump with 85 percent. That's pretty in line with, if not actually a little bit more than has identified as very conservative in New South Carolina in the past.
In addition, you had 68% identifying as Republican. That's a little less than before, but that's another good group for Trump. So yeah, like the electorate looked as expected. And I think Jeffrey's back of the envelope calculations obviously ended up coming true.
So as we're sitting here, Trump has won 38 of the 50 delegates available in South Carolina. And I think the issue here is that it's like a winner-take-all system in South Carolina, but that goes both by the congressional district level and the statewide level. And so obviously Trump won statewide, and so he won the statewide delegate hall. But there are a couple of congressional districts where –
we don't really, we can't say for sure that, you know, Haley didn't win it and maybe she could snag a couple of delegates. I know that Jeffrey has been looking into that for us throughout the evening. That could be a way for Haley to maybe save some face and maybe justify staying in the race. I don't know. I mean, I think that ship sailed a long time ago, which I'm sure we'll talk about. But yeah, I mean, basically the bottom line is
South Carolina, it does have an electorate that is well suited to Trump, but also like it's Haley's home state. And like the fact that she can't win there or in New Hampshire where the electorate was better for her and she maybe is just going to emerge with a handful of delegates. Like, obviously, this is just telling us things that we already knew, which was that she's not going to beat Donald Trump.
Right, which is why at this point we're having maybe more academic conversations than horse race conversations. And so the first of those academic conversations is maybe, is 60% a good showing for Trump in South Carolina? I mean, you all have just described the state as demographically well-suited to the kind of coalition that he does well with.
And like he's basically an incumbent. Right. Everyone in the state knows what he's like as a president, knows how he fares on the policies that they care about and in general feel good about those things. He does well in terms of favorability amongst Republicans. But getting only 60 percent of the vote, that seems, I mean, to me, not to put my finger on the scale already, not great.
No, I think it was it was certainly not bad. Like Jeffrey said, like, I think like Jeffrey put out some good benchmarks and like he is at those benchmarks and like maybe you can say he should have done better. I don't know. I mean, there's there's been a lot of benchmarks from a competitive primary. The 26th. Yeah, but it is a competitive primary. No, come on. Let's be serious. Donald Trump is basically running as an incumbent. Nikki Haley outspent Donald Trump in South Carolina, like 13 to one. Like she.
and her allies poured money into that state. Donald Trump spent something like $1.2 million on TV ads, which is like a drop in the bucket. Donald Trump also didn't visit the state. He visited the state eight times. Nikki Haley held 52 campaign events in South Carolina. This is a big disparity. Because it doesn't matter when you're the incumbent, right? Everyone knows who you are. Everyone knows how you fare on the issues.
I think a better point of comparison than 2016 is 1992. Maybe, but like... And Pat Buchanan got 30% of the vote and everyone freaked out. But like...
He's not like he's not an incumbent. He's not. Yeah, he's not actually the incumbent. Like he is somewhere between the like totally open race of like where nobody has been president before and a sitting incumbent president. But like he is in neither camp. Yeah, he's a pseudo incumbent. Quasi incumbent. Like that's the reason or a big reason why he's doing so well. But.
But he hasn't been in office in four years. That also explains why there's still like at least somewhat of a competition. And the fact is voters had more than one name to choose from realistically on the ballot. So Nikki's going to get some of the vote. I doubt Trump is losing any sleep over it. So do you think Trump did well tonight?
Yeah, he did well. Let's not overthink it. He won by 20 points. He won by 20 points and is very likely going to get every single delegate in her home state. I think he's feeling pretty good. Well, I don't know about that. We'll see. Yeah? We'll see. You know, I've been mostly focused on the 1st Congressional District, which for people at home is mostly along the coast of South Carolina and takes in...
Part of Charleston, go down to Hilton Head, the very kind of bottom near Savannah, and then sort of areas around Charleston. And the vote share there could be very close to 50-50.
And actually, I hadn't really focused on this too much, but it is possible that Haley could even be close in the sixth congressional district, which is the one Democratic district in South Carolina where Jim Clyburn hails from. That district takes in a large chunk of Richland County, which is where Columbia, South Carolina is. And while that district's going to generally have the lowest turnout of any district because it
because it's very democratic, so you're gonna have fewer Republican voters there. Richland County, where Columbia is, is voting for Haley right now, and so it is possible that could actually also be close. The Green Papers, which is, boy, you're getting in the weeds if you've ever been to thegreenpapers.com, but let me tell you,
They've got a running estimate right now, and it's extremely tight in the 6th district. And they actually have Haley very slightly ahead in the 1st. But again, we don't have all the votes yet, and we'll just have to see how it pans out. Anyway, I got to mention the Green Papers on a podcast. So we're really having a great time here. We're cooking with gas. What a Saturday night, guys.
You're a podcast listener, and this is a podcast ad. Reach great listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Lipson Ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements, or run a reproduced ad like this one across thousands of shows to reach your target audience with Lipson Ads. Go to LipsonAds.com now. That's L-I-B-S-Y-N-Ads.com.
You're a podcast listener, and this is a podcast ad. Reach great listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Lipson Ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements, or run a reproduced ad like this one across thousands of shows to reach your target audience with Lipson Ads. Go to LipsonAds.com now. That's L-I-B-S-Y-N-Ads.com. I want to be clear that what I was saying is that
I don't think that Trump is performing well for somebody who's assumed to be the leader of the party, have a lock on the party, whatever. I mean, not getting 40 percent of Republicans in a very conservative state where two thirds of the electorate is white evangelicals.
Seems not great to me. Now, I don't know if that has any general election lessons to draw from it because we're talking about two unpopular candidates here. But I don't know. I think there's something to be said for losing 40 percent of the vote as somebody in a stronger position as Donald Trump.
But like, that's tautological, right? He's only presumed to be in a strong position because he is winning every state. Now you're acknowledging that he might not be in a strong position. I mean, he is. He is objectively. He's winning. So he is the first non-incumbent, which I guess Galen doesn't think he's non-incumbent. He's the first non-incumbent Republican to win Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina in the modern era. That is strength personified. Yeah.
I don't think it's fair to include him as an incumbent either. Like he is he is by definition not an incumbent. And the reason he's not an incumbent is because he lost the last election. Like that is part of the story here. That's part of what his candidacy is. And he's doing pretty well considering all that. Yeah.
I'm disappointed in you, Kaylee. On the live blog, you made the opposite argument. Did I? What did I say? You entrapped Galen. You said that Donald Trump wasn't doing well by winning only 60% of the vote. You literally wrote that on the live blog.
Well, maybe I changed my mind in the last 15 minutes of the night. I thought I was going to have at least one companion in this argument. So I went into this trying to get a debate going, thinking you would be on my side. And now I'm out here all alone wearing my hot person at work T-shirt at 10 o'clock at night on a Saturday.
Didn't I say he's not not doing well? I thought that I used a double negative there. You did. I think Galen misread it. I've been using the term quasi-incumbent. He is a quasi-incumbent. Like, at the end of the day, Donald Trump has many of the same strengths that we would associate with a typical incumbent, given the amount of influence he has on the Republican Party, its leadership, its membership. I mean, you see the number of endorsements he's gotten from members of Congress, and
It's, you know, it's kind of like people sort of rallying to him. And, you know, he's winning three fourths, 70, yeah, 72 percent tonight among Republicans. And so roughly like three fourths in New Hampshire and South Carolina among Republicans, like people who identified as Republican who voted in the Republican primary. So I would consider only four percent of the people who voted tonight identified as Democrats. So it's not a lot of those people are unaffiliated.
Right. To be clear, it's like sort of everyone who's not identifying as Republican, most of whom say they're independent or something else, and those who identify as Republican. And of course, in a Republican primary –
The only state where this isn't true is New Hampshire. You always have a lot more Republicans or Democrats if it were a Democratic primary than people who don't identify with the party in question because it is a party primary. And so the people most interested are the people who identify with that party. It's the same problem for Bernie Sanders. Why he couldn't win a Democratic nomination is that he would do best among independents but couldn't win Democrats, which is kind of a fundamental challenge.
if you're going to win a party primary. So for Trump, he's really strong among Republicans, the people who make up most of the people voting in this primary. And at the end of the day, that's, I think, reflective of the party is behind him. Yes, there are independents, some of whom are Republican-leaning independents because they're participating in a Republican primary, are voting for Nikki Haley more so than Trump. Tonight, it looks like Haley is winning about 59% to 40% among independents, although there's
The exit poll is not grouping together independent and something else, and Trump is actually doing very well among the small number of people who called themselves something else. So I'm not exactly sure. Maybe it's closer to 50-50 among independents, but the broader point is –
The party is behind Trump. That suggests to me that this doesn't tell us all that much about the general election, maybe. Yeah, I agree that this doesn't tell us all that much about the general election. One more question about demographics before we move on to the really motivating question for the night where we can bring back up Bernie Sanders.
We knew that Nikki Haley was doing well with more moderate voters, more independent voters, folks who have a college degree, folks who are a bit wealthier. She overperformed the most in the upscale parts of New Hampshire. She's overperformed the most in the upscale parts of South Carolina.
She spent a lot of time, though, arguing the case on a couple policy issues that was quite, like, traditionally conservative, right? She was talking a lot about Russia and Putin and taking a harsh stand against Russia. She also took relatively conservative positions on abortion. So we already know that she said that she would support a six-week ban on abortion. And she said, after the IVF ruling in Alabama, that she considers embryos to be babies.
And also South Carolina knows Nikki Haley as a Tea Party governor when she first ran for governor. Was she able to expand beyond that sort of natural coalition tonight? Honestly, I'm not sure. I mean, look, let's just use the issue of Ukraine as just like a starting point here. So it's been a couple months, but in December, Pew Research put out data, and they've been tracking this in a way that I find very helpful, that
which is that they ask respondents, do you think that the U.S. is providing too much support to Ukraine, the about right amount of support to Ukraine, or not enough support? And so like nationally, Republicans, about half said that they're providing too much, but that did mean that about a third, you have a lot of people who also said they weren't sure, you had a third who said either about right amount or not enough. And so for me, it's like, okay, people who are
Maybe more in tune with a more traditionally conservative approach, maybe closer to neoconservative approach to American power and influence and world affairs and military intervention and what have you. Something that Haley's out there arguing that the U.S. needs to support Ukraine.
There is still clearly a constituency that might be receptive to that within the Republican Party. Now, the party has clearly moved more toward the, I would say, Trumpian view of things. But I think that there is a receptive – there is at least some group, and you're probably more likely to find those among people who are more highly educated and wealthier who might be more in tune with that more traditionally conservative viewpoint. And so maybe it's no coincidence those are people that she did best with.
So yeah, to answer your question, Galen, the following is an exhaustive list of the demographic groups that Haley won tonight according to the exit polls.
People with an advanced degree. College graduates. White college graduates. People who have not voted before in Republican primaries. Independents. Moderates. People who are not white evangelical or white born-again Christians. People in households that do not own a gun. People who are enthusiastic or satisfied with the way things are going in the country today. People who think the condition of the nation's economy is good.
People who are, quote, getting ahead financially. People who think in world affairs, the United States should take about the same role as now, equally active. People who said abortion was the most important issue. People who thought foreign policy was the most important issue. People who thought that the temperament was the most important quality in a candidate. People who oppose banning abortions nationwide. People who think that most undocumented immigrants in the U.S. should be offered a chance to apply for legal status.
People whose vote for president today was mainly against their opponent. I think that's an important one. Okay, wait. Nathaniel, let me, to save you a little effort here. I think... The answer is no. This is her coalition. But that's, to me, if you're winning 40% of the elect, right, like,
Does South Carolina have a higher proportion of college graduates or a smaller proportion of college graduates than the country as a whole? Because the country as a whole, it's about 38%. So to me, if you're winning 40%, you're maybe expanding beyond that sort of natural base. I'm not really sure if it matches the country or not.
And really, when it comes to these questions, like, it's all about narrowing the margins. We know that basically nobody running against Donald Trump is going to win non-college educated voters or folks whose education ends at a high school degree. We know that that's the case. But whether or not you can appeal to other folks is more about the question of whether you can narrow the margins. Fair. Yeah.
Yeah. So Galen, South Carolina is maybe slightly under the national percentage for people who have a four-year college degree. I mean, it's relatively close. This is just using the five-year percentage.
American Community Survey data, which puts the national among the states and District of Columbia at about 34% with a bachelor's degree. Oh, 34%? I overshot. Well, it depends on what you're using. I use this because I use a lot of the five-year data to compare with county-level data, and so I'm trying to compare across the same things. Anyway, the broader point is that South Carolina and that data was at about 31%. So it was just under the
The national. But still significantly lower than 40. Yes. And also she didn't win every person with a college degree who voted today. No. In fact. It was pretty evenly split, actually. Yeah, it was pretty 50-50. In fact, honestly, with margin of error, you know, Trump might have narrowly won them. It was close.
It should also be noted that as it was a primary and it tends to attract a more engaged, educated electorate. And so according to the exit polls, which again are just an estimate, 43 percent of Republican voters today were college graduates. Among people without college graduates, Trump won 74 percent to 26 percent.
Interesting. Okay, so Nikki Haley is obviously facing some difficulty trying to win over the dominant part of the electorate within the Republican Party. So the question that's worth asking is, what is Nikki Haley doing?
You're a podcast listener, and this is a podcast ad. Reach great listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Lipson Ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements, or run a reproduced ad like this one across thousands of shows to reach your target audience with Lipson Ads. Go to LipsonAds.com now. That's L-I-B-S-Y-N-Ads.com.
Okay, I want to lay out a couple different scenarios here, and I want to hear your takes on which you think are the likeliest. So, number one, what is Nikki Haley doing? She is trying to win the Republican primary. That's why she's staying in, and she thinks that something will happen between now and Super Tuesday that will make it likely that she'll win.
Number one. Okay, number two, she's making a political point a la Bernie Sanders in 2016 when he stayed in the race well beyond the point at which it was clear that he wouldn't win the nomination. He wanted to bring the Democratic Party to the left on a slate of economic issues. Nikki Haley wants to...
bring the Republican Party in a different direction when it comes to things like America's role in the world, character, et cetera, et cetera. And so at this point, her reason for being in the race is making a point and trying to chart a different path forward for the Republican Party, even if it's not through the nomination in 2024.
She is counting on a sort of black swan event, which renders Donald Trump either ineligible or unappealing as the nominee months from now based on legal liability, as he faces, of course, for criminal cases to state level and to federal. So that's three. Four is that she's laying the groundwork for a 2028 run.
And five is that she is no labels Nikki. She's laying the groundwork for a third party moderate independent run in 2024. Okay, I've given you five scenarios. Wait, is that all the scenarios? You don't think she's going for Veep?
No. Absolutely not. I'm joking. No f***ing way. Okay, so Kaylee, let's start with you. We'll include the sixth, as you suggested. Sixth is Veep. How would you rank them in terms of likeliest?
I'm going to combine a few. I think that maybe she is sort of doing a few things at once in trying to do the sort of Sanders thing of, like, pushing a certain agenda and shaping the conversation within the party, while also...
Like kind of placing a bit of a bet on like maybe something happens to Trump and maybe if I'm in it longer and the other candidates have to jump back in versus still being in, maybe that gives me some kind of advantage. And also maybe in doing all of those things, it helps me set up a nice little ramp into 2028 and.
So that's sort of, I feel like it's sort of a bit of all those things I'm cheating on it is like the most likely. And then next, most likely the idea that she would be in the administration or actually when barring, you know, some kind of legal event with Trump, it just seems really, really unlikely. But you never know. Politicians, you know, they, they believe in themselves. Self-belief is strong among politicians. So I agree with Kayleigh.
I think her main motivating factor at this point has to be principle. The idea that somebody should be out there making the case against Donald Trump from within the Republican Party. I don't think she is delusional enough to think that she is actually on a path to win. I think maybe Kayleigh is right that like she sees the possibility for like a bank shot with, you know, Trump being disqualified or her future political aspirations. But I actually think those are
also delusional. First of all, I mean, the Supreme Court is not going to kick Trump off the ballot. Like, it's just not going to happen. But second of all, this is my hot take. I've been sharing this around with people already. Are you guys ready? This is my ranking of the most likely candidates to be the next Republican nominee. Number one, Donald Trump. Number two, Ron DeSantis. Number three, Nikki Lovett. Yeah, I agree.
I agree. If something crazy happens, it's Ron DeSantis. It's not me. Ron DeSantis, everybody, there is no like magic behind dropping out. You don't evaporate into the ether. Like Ron DeSantis' name is still on the ballot. He didn't drop out. He suspended, he suspended his campaign and he couldn't unsuspend. Exactly. Right. Like if Donald Trump somehow drops out of the race or is disqualified or something like that, Ron DeSantis will just
jump right in. He was much better positioned to be the nominee because he is Trumpier and just like he is where the party is. Whereas every day that Nikki Haley stays in the race, she's alienating herself more and more from the voters that she would need. And then in terms of 2028, maybe she's saying like, oh, Donald Trump is going to crash and burn in the general election and people are finally going to realize I was right.
And they're going to turn to me as their savior in 2028. I just don't think that's going to happen. Like, again, they have an appetite. Republicans have an appetite for a Trumpier type of Republican. I don't know. I think this was kind of the case that like John Kasich was making in 2016. And then it was like, whoops, well, no.
Trump actually won. So so much for that, John Kasich. Nothing makes sense unless she's doing it on principle. And I don't think that she is stupid or clueless. So I think I think it has to be kind of for for reasons of presenting an alternative, like kind of going down the ship in terms of the anti-Trump wing of the party.
She said, and I will go down with the ship. I will not wave a white flag above my door. Is that from something? It's Dido. White flag? I won't put my hands up and surrender. Look, Nikki Haley is a woman of her word, as she said tonight. So I also think that it is the principle slash, let's just see what happens approach to campaigning approach.
Because if you kind of look at the history of presidential primary candidates dating back to the 1970s and the start of like the modern nomination process, you can kind of largely lump candidates into two groups. They're either office-seeking candidates. So these are people who actually –
Their goal is winning the nomination because they want to win the office. And that's like first and foremost their number one goal. And so when things start going poorly for them, they tend to drop out because they don't want to like take losses, maybe get – take political damage for their losses. They move on.
And then there are also candidates who are called agenda-seeking candidates. And so up until tonight, I would have categorized Haley largely as an office-seeking candidate. She's clearly somebody who's been running to win. No, it has not been going well.
But she started this campaign with the clear goal of trying to win the nomination. She wasn't pushing one particular issue. She wasn't – or a set of issues. She was making a case maybe for a certain vision of republicanism. But that I would view differently than say a candidate who was single issue or like – anyway, it can sometimes be like some gray areas with how you categorize these. But Haley I think would have been an office-seeking candidate. She wants to win. Yeah.
If she keeps this race going, and perhaps even beyond Super Tuesday, if she were to really keep going, I kind of wonder if she'd be an interesting example of somebody maybe switching a bit from office-seeking to agenda-seeking. Because her agenda at this point is to push back on the notion that Trump represents where the Republican Party should go and that he could lose in November. Now, maybe that still has a little bit of the office-seeking to it. It's like we're focused on the party and doing well.
But if she's also pushing Trump is the wrong thing to do for the Republican Party, that's interesting. And maybe that's a compelling enough reason for her to stay in and essentially sacrifice her political career or what's left of it. You know, like I have a difficult time seeing how that wouldn't really, really damage her if she stuck around. But I would say stranger things have happened. I don't know if we'll want to include this or not. Then you definitely want to say it. Yeah.
You know, the discussion around Trump not being the nominee in some way related to his legal issues. He's also going to be 78. Not completely unheard of that he might not make it to the election for other reasons. Obviously, Biden's an even bigger risk factor on that as an older man. Yeah.
But I feel like that's the unsaid thing also kind of behind a lot of this. We've got two very old prospective candidates. Kayleigh, Kayleigh, Kayleigh, you've missed all of the conversation on this podcast about actuarial tables from the Social Security Administration while you were out on leave. Oh, dear. For Biden himself, an 81-year-old man, on average, he will live forever.
for more than seven years longer. So for Trump, it's even longer than that. But again, this brings us back to DeSantis anyway. I do want to add nothing
numbers to what Jeffrey was saying about sort of sacrificing a political career. We talked last Thursday about watching to see if Nikki Haley remains in the green on favorability with Republican voters nationally, because so far she has been able to. She hasn't criticized Trump in the way that like Asa Hutchinson or Mike Pence or Chris Christie did that ultimately got them significantly underwater with Republican voters.
She is now in the most recent NBC poll, just slightly underwater with Republican voters nationally after sort of turning quite anti-Trump since New Hampshire. And so I think that is a data point in favor of sort of taking a stand, making a political point. Now, there's like a world in which making a political point or being an agenda candidate is
could result in an office-seeking opportunity, which is you make your case, you make your case, you make your case. Donald Trump loses in 2024. And like Bernie Sanders, she claims, I told you so. I'm the heir apparent in the next election. I can get us back on track. I can win. And maybe after losing another time with Donald Trump,
electoral viability becomes a bigger priority for Republican voters. This is all maybe a little West Wing fan fictiony, but we usually get into West Wing fan fiction territory on these late night pods anyway. But that like, if you really bank shot it just right, you can align the
agenda candidate with office seeking if things line up in such a way. But it's also relying on Trump losing in 2024, which I don't think anybody can rely on.
And that the party says, oh, you were right instead of screw you. You're the reason that Donald Trump lost. Yeah, it feels like there's still this cohort of Republicans and conservatives, the Liz Cheney's of the world, who think that there's like the true Republican Party. And this is just like a detour it's been taking for the last decade.
eight years but that you know once like at some point it's going to get back on track and it'll be back you know trump will be gone and it'll go back to the way it was just kind of like not accepting the reality of what it is right now one like small part of me does wonder about you know there was a sizable i don't have numbers for this but there was a sizable group of
Hardcore Trump supporters who weren't really voters before and, you know, maybe identified as Republican or conservative, but like just weren't like super politically active. And Trump is the reason that they came out and the reason that they voted. And I wonder if that enthusiasm continues for Trump like candidates and sort of the mega Republican Party going forward or if it's really, truly tied to Trump after he either.
Serves another four years or, you know, loses and maybe gives up or whatever happens with Trump. 2028, baby. You know, do those supporters go with him or or stick around? But yeah, I do think that it's a bit of a fantasy among the old guard that there's this true Republican Party that they'll somehow like get back to.
Yeah, Kaylee, speaking of West Wing fanfic, there was one option at the end there, I think it was number five, that was the West Wing-iest fan fictionist of them all, which was that Hayley ends up launching...
a third party bit. No labels has already said that they're interested in recruiting her. She said in response that she doesn't have any interest in talking to them. It's always a no until it's a yes when it comes to these kinds of things, not saying that that's actually what she's interested in pursuing. But let's just say for a second, she or somebody like her did do that.
How much of an appetite is there for Nikki Haley unencumbered by party in America today? I am pretty skeptical that any third party or independent candidate can win right now, no matter how well known they are. I do think that Nikki Haley would be a more, in a lot of ways, a more compelling candidate, at least in the sense that she has built a
at least some following and shown evidence of being able to campaign and whatnot, than say some of the other options that have been bandied about as potential no-labels candidates, which by the way is a problem for them because who is that candidate going to be? Was it going to be Joe Manchin? Because he says he's not running for president now. Was it going to be Larry Hogan? Well, he's running for Senate. He's running for Senate in Maryland now, so it won't be him.
So they clearly have an issue with trying to find a candidate. So Nikki Haley would be interesting in that – from that standpoint. But we have like what, a couple of national polls that have tested her against Biden and Trump as an independent, and she's got like 12%, 13% of them. And now, look, I think you can create the circumstances where something happens to Biden and people are –
scared and they run to her as like an alternative or something. I just think that a path to victory is really difficult for me to imagine. I think the last thing I want to say about this is it's really easy to look at the polls and say, okay, you have like majority saying that they don't want Biden to run again. And then you'll have on a separate question, a majority saying you don't want Trump to run again.
But if you actually break that down, the share of people who are saying no to both, it's going to vary from poll to poll, but it might be a quarter. It might be a third of people who might be saying no to both. But some percentage of that group is probably going to end up voting for the major party candidates. So I just think it's clear that a lot of people are not happy that this is going to be the matchup or in all likelihood going to be the matchup.
But I think we have to be careful not to sort of overstate just how much that's the case. I just don't think it's there. I don't think that she would be a good candidate for it either. Like of that 30 percent that don't like Biden and don't like Trump, I don't believe a
large chunk of them would be very interested in Nikki Haley. As much as she has pivoted away from the more mega arm of the party, her record as governor is quite conservative. And, you know, I think a lot of those people that are unhappy with the status quo aren't like moderates floating around sort of the right side of the middle. I think it's probably people more on the fringes
it's hard for me to see her as being like the ideal candidate even within a weird scenario where fanfic scenario where there's a viable third party option kaylee i totally agree with you on this like when you divide people up into the four quadrants along the economic axis and the culture access or you know social issues access
She occupies... It's hard to say because she has shifted her positioning a bit, but she occupies probably more fiscally conservative, a little bit more socially moderate. And that is the least dense quadrant in American politics, right? Like...
The quadrant that is most ripe to take advantage of is culturally conservative, economically liberal, which is in some ways the quadrant that Trump has already taken advantage of. Look, in an environment where Trump and Biden are both quite unpopular, is there some crazy world where a third party candidate could come in who's like super well funded and make a case and just say, like, this is all a mess, this is broken, right?
The kind of party or the kind of person who would make that argument, I mean, I think of, like, the Five Stars movement in Italy, for example, like, not to really get far afield on a Saturday night, but it's like, you claim to be post-partisan, you say, like, you know, the parties have ruined America, and you make a really populist appeal. Being, like...
A conservative tilting technocrat is absolutely not the kind of person who is going to make like the parties are just so broken. Like, come with me. They've nominated two old people who are so out of touch and incompetent and corrupt that they can't handle the country anymore. Like Nikki Haley isn't the person to do that.
You want Donald Trump. Frankly, Donald Trump circa 2016 fits this, except he decided to run for a major party nomination because he knew that was the only way he could actually win the election. Or at least I assumed that that was part of his consideration there. And of course, that's what ended up happening. You know, Ross Perot got 18, 19 percent of the popular vote in 1992. Ross Perot is a kind of good example of this in that he starts fighting on a completely different axis that is like,
The debt and deficit is ruining America and gives like half an hour long tutorials on an issue that other people aren't really even talking about and uses it as a sort of stand in for saying that like everyone is corrupt and incompetent and they're ruining your country. What was the party Trump ran the first time? His third party run? Reform, which was the offshoot of Perot. It's what the label Perot ran under 1996. It was attempting to be a third party party.
And it fell apart because it turned out it was really, really hard to manage the ideological differences within a third party. Pat Buchanan ended up being the Reform Party nominee, which just sort of shows how far afield it got from where it was kind of initially starting out.
You have to be somewhat ideologically free in order to combine all of the disaffected people under one umbrella, because as soon as you start talking about ideology, people start fighting with each other. Now, the one thing that you can give a Nikki Haley third-party independent run is the thing that unites all Democrats today and the, like, independence that they bring along with them is a dislike of Donald Trump.
And if that's like the number one thing that is going to motivate people, if there's like an utter collapse of Biden's campaign, then Nikki Haley can become just the only thing she needs to be is the alternative to Trump and ideology becomes irrelevant potentially. But again, you'd have to have a situation where Biden's campaign fully collapses. She basically he basically endorses Nikki Haley. And that's the only world in which like this works. Well,
West Wing fanfic. Yeah, I mean, like the only circumstances if you look at like down ballot races, right? The only times when third party candidates have a legitimate shot of winning is when they essentially replace candidates
one major party's candidates. So when Tom Tancredo ran for governor of Colorado, I think in 2010, he became the de facto Republican nominee. You look at Greg Orman running for Senate in Kansas, effectively became the Democratic nominee. And so, yeah, you'd have to have something like that happen. Like a true three-way race isn't going to happen.
I have a fun fact, though, to bring this full circle. So pop quiz, guys. According to FiveThirtyEight's favorability averages, who is more unpopular, Donald Trump or Nikki Haley?
I feel like you're only asking us this if it is Nikki Haley. That's correct. Donald Trump is at negative eight net favorability and Nikki Haley is at negative 10. So like she ain't fixing the problem of two candidates that Americans don't like because then it would just be three and three is a crowd.
Drop the mic. Nathaniel, that was art. That was art. Very nicely done. All right. Well, I had a couple more things to talk about, but I think we're just going to have to save them because that was too good of an ending for this late night podcast. It's time for me to take my ice spice T-shirt to the club. Thank you, Nathaniel, Kaylee, and Jeffrey.
Thanks, Galen. Thank you, Galen. It was a blast as always. And welcome back, Kaylee. Thanks, guys. It's good to be back. Yeah, it's great to have you back. My name is Galen Druk. Tony Chow is in the control room. Our producers are Shane McKeon and Cameron Shortavian. And our intern is Jayla Everett. You can get in touch by emailing us at podcast at 538.com. You can also, of course, tweet at us with any questions or comments. If you're a fan of the show, leave us a rating or review in the Apple Podcast Store or tell someone about us. Thanks for listening, and we will see you soon.
Ooh!