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Nikki Haley has decided to end her presidential campaign, a person familiar with the matter said on Wednesday. The move caps a bid for the White House that outlasted all the other Republican rivals to Donald Trump but failed to gain enough support to topple the former president.
Haley was due to speak from her home state of South Carolina at 10am Eastern Time on Wednesday after losing to Trump in the vast majority of Republican primary contests held on Super Tuesday.
The only primary races she had won thus far were in Vermont and the District of Columbia, the seat of the US capital. Trump is now on the brink of securing enough delegates to win the Republican presidential nomination.
Haley, a former South Carolina governor and former US ambassador to the UN, had cast herself throughout the campaign as a voice for traditional conservatism on economic and foreign policy, and part of a new generation of political leadership for the country.
After posting strong performances in the televised Republican debates last year, she began to rise in the polls and secured the support from prominent anti-Trump donors on Wall Street, while the field of contenders began to narrow.
Haley’s strongest support came from moderate and independent centre-right voters opposed to Trump, which propelled her into third place in the Iowa caucuses, and second place in the New Hampshire primary.
But she was never able to overcome Trump’s overwhelming lead among staunchly conservative voters and the heart of the party’s base, which is now dominated by the former president.
In the final stretch of her campaign, she increasingly launched attacks on Trump’s age, character and fitness for office, including calling him “unhinged” — but that more aggressive approach did not resonate with enough Republican voters to imperil his advantage.
Haley also repeatedly warned that Trump would lose a general election against Biden — and suggested the incumbent president would fail to finish his term in office, leaving Kamala Harris, the vice-president, in the White House. The Wall Street Journal first reported Haley’s decision to end her bid.
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