to the U.N., posed a serious threat to his reelection campaign.
“Well, she got very few voters relatively, I mean, I got almost, I guess, close to 90%,” Trump told Charles Benson about Haley’s success in Wisconsin. “She got very few voters. And those voters are all coming to me. And you may have a lot of Democrats in there because they have a very tricky little system.”
“We just did a poll where we’re leading Biden by a lot in Wisconsin,” Trump continued.
Trump easily won Wisconsin’s primary last month with 79.2% of the vote, but Haley still managed to garner 76,841 votes or nearly 13% of the total.
Haley received a significantly higher number of votes than the roughly 21,000 that helped Biden defeat Trump in Wisconsin during the 2020 election.
She has maintained her double-digit lead in other state primaries, such as the ones in West Virginia, Nebraska, and Maryland this week.
In the Maryland GOP primary, Haley received 20% of the vote while Trump received 80%. Haley received about 18% of the vote in Nebraska, a consistently red state, while Trump received 80.2% of the vote. Haley received slightly more than 9% of the vote in West Virginia, while Trump received 88.4%.
Haley received over 158,000 votes in other battleground states like Pennsylvania, or 16.6% of the total. This suggests that if Trump doesn’t include her supporters in the GOP, it could cost him the 2024 election.
Trump’s remarks about Haley are noteworthy in light of President Joe Biden’s efforts to win over Haley’s supporters to his cause.
Since Haley withdrew from the race the day after Super Tuesday, the two have not spoken.
Although Haley hasn’t endorsed her former employer, Trump appears eager to get Haley back on board after dismissing a rumor that she was being considered as his running mate.
Haley “is not under consideration for the V.P. slot, but I wish her well! DJT,” he posted on Truth Social over the weekend.
Haley continues to garner some support in Republican primaries even though she formally dropped out of the race two months ago, after which she refused at the time to endorse Trump.
And no endorsement appears forthcoming—at least not yet, according to The Wall Street Journal.
A source told the outlet that Haley and Trump never spoke when she dropped out of the race on March 6 and have not had any talks since.
Eric Tanenblatt, a long-time GOP fundraiser and strategist in Georgia, says he hopes that Nikki Haley, 52, will run for president again. Tanenblatt plans to attend the donor meeting.
“Sometimes it takes more than one run to secure the nomination. Look at John McCain and Mitt Romney,” he said, citing two past GOP nominees who took more than one try. “She created something of a movement and built a coalition of Republicans, independents, and even some conservative Democrats.”
The strategist told the WSJ that he can see a scenario in which Haley publicly supports her former boss, but that it would take Trump reaching out to her and her supporters.
“It’s now up to President Trump to unite the Republican Party by demonstrating to Nikki supporters that they have a place under the tent,” he said.
Senior members of Haley’s political and fundraising team are set to attend a meeting to analyze the strategies and efforts that enabled her campaign to surpass approximately a dozen other primary contenders. During the review, her team plans to report that Haley’s campaign and associated groups raised $162 million from over 287,000 donors.
Despite suspending her campaign, she continues to garner support in Republican primaries. For instance, on Tuesday in Indiana, she received nearly 22 percent of the vote, underscoring a potential weakness for Trump among key suburban voters.
“That’s incredible, considering she never campaigned there,” Bill Strong, a Florida-based former international investment banker and longtime GOP fundraiser who supported Haley and plans to attend the donor meeting, told the WSJ.