Fresh off a string of defeats to former President Donald Trump and with a gloomy outlook for Super Tuesday, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley’s path to the convention in Milwaukee has all but closed. If it wasn’t evident before, it is now crystal clear that a majority of Republican primary voters don’t want her as their nominee.
But the unique contours of the 2024 presidential race — and the fraying edges of our 21st-century political landscape — make me question how much of an obstacle to Haley’s White House aspirations that really is.
While others have tried and failed to win as independents before, I have to wonder whether, with the right resources, someone like Haley really needs to be a nominee of one of the two major parties to win in a year like 2024. Here’s why.
For one, it’s been true for years that an increasing number of American voters are casting off party affiliation; there are now more voters who identify as independent than who identify as either Republican or Democrat.
It has also been true that on both sides of the aisle, only the most extreme partisans actually vote in a primary; the vast majority of Americans don’t cast ballots until November. A striking illustration of this point: in 2016, the last open presidential election, Trump and Hillary Clinton became the nominees of their parties with the combined support of only 9% of the American public. (The other 91% either voted for someone else in the primaries or, much more statistically likely, didn’t vote in the primaries.)
So when we assume, as seems natural to do, that when someone like Trump is nominated it’s because he’s the top choice of the “conservative half” of the country — or Clinton the top choice of the “liberal half” — we are way off the mark. It’s not even close to half.
And when polls (often cited by Haley on the stump) show that large majorities of Americans don’t want a 2024 rematch between Trump and President Joe Biden — and yet these guys keep winning primaries anyway — then we have to conclude that the primary system isn’t working as it ought to. It isn’t reflective of the political will of the nation at large.
So if we can’t get more people to participate in primaries and thus shape the Election Day binary into a more accurate reflection, then maybe we need to rethink who gets to make it to the general election as a major contender. Haley may well have that kind of viability.
In a head-to-head matchup, Trump and Biden are in a dead heat, whereas Haley beats the incumbent by double-digits, giving her some cushion were the ballot to expand to three major options. And while it may be tempting to think that an independent Haley would siphon only Republican votes and thus inadvertently deliver a Democratic victory, a recent Marquette Law School poll found that Haley “[attracts] a substantial cross-over vote from Democrats,” stealing 21% of that vote share from Biden and earning 60% of the independent vote. Add to that Haley’s youth, which could have bipartisan appeal in a race where 59% of voters think both Biden and Trump are too old to serve as president and where she’d be the only candidate younger than 80 at the end of the term.
Meanwhile, No Labels, the organization seeking a third-party bid in the general election, has said as recently as last weekend that they are “definitely” interested in Haley leading their ticket. If a moderate, youthful Democrat is selected in the veepstakes (which is the stated intention of No Labels’ “unity ticket”), that could boost Haley’s crossover appeal and cut into Biden’s share even further.
While No Labels can’t boast the same electoral apparatus as the institutional juggernauts that are the DNC and RNC, its efforts toward ballot access would provide the most sophisticated electoral vehicle for a third-party candidate since Ross Perot’s Reform Party in 1996, something that has been lacking in independent runs since.
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And crucially, since Haley has already been running for president — with all the momentum and name-recognition benefits that entails — her campaign infrastructure is already well-established and could stay largely intact, eliminating a challenge that often befalls candidates who jump in late and have to catch up with competitors with year-long head starts.
This isn’t yet a full-throated call for Haley to run as an independent. More polling, specifically surveys that include all three candidates in a general election, is needed to get a clearer picture of how the math shakes out and how steep Haley’s climb would be. Gone would be the landslide victory Haley might’ve achieved as the GOP nominee, to be sure.
But the data that is currently available — the electorate’s dissatisfaction with Trump and Biden, its concerns about their age, Haley’s crossover appeal and built-out campaign presence, the resources available via No Labels, and the much larger, more independent share of votes in a general election — begins to paint the picture of a competitive, three-way contest.
And if that’s the case, then maybe you don’t need a primary to land you in the White House, after all.
Brian Ericson is a former columnist for Deseret News in Salt Lake City, where he wrote with a focus on U.S. political campaigns and elections. An alumnus of the Young Voices contributor program, his writing has also been featured in the Washington Examiner, Free the People, Townhall, The Tennessean, the Foundation for Economic Education, and Spiked magazine.