CV NEWS FEED // Former Ambassador Nikki Haley lost Tuesday’s Nevada Republican Primary to a line on the ballot that simply read “None of These Candidates.”
With 88% of the vote reporting, “None of these Candidates” had 63.2% of the vote to Haley’s 30.5%.
Due to having the most votes of any actual candidate, Haley is still technically considered the “winner” of the contest.
Former Vice President Mike Pence came in third place in the primary with 4.0% of the vote. Pence ended his campaign for president in October 2023. Sen. Tim Scott, R-SC, came in fourth with 1.4%. Scott dropped out of the race in November.
The outcome of the primary has no bearing on the race for the party’s 2024 presidential nomination.
All of Nevada’s 26 delegates will be awarded based on the results of Thursday’s Republican caucuses. President Donald Trump is set to dominate the contest, where his only opponent is Pastor Ryan Binkley.
Trump called the shocking Nevada primary a “bad night for Nikki Haley” on Truth Social.
“Watch, she’ll soon claim Victory!” the Republican frontrunner joked.
Haley was in no joking mood following her dismal showing in the Silver State. “It’s such a scam,” she told a reporter. “Trump rigged it.”
Haley went on to allege that Trump worked behind the scenes so Nevada Republican Party Chairman Michael McDonald “would go and create a caucus.”
“We knew months ago that we weren’t going to spend a day or a dollar in Nevada, because it wasn’t worth it,” Haley claimed. “We didn’t even count Nevada … we knew that [it] was rigged from the start.”
McDonald said of the candidate’s remarks: “At the end of the day, the disrespect that Nikki Haley showed us, she just got reciprocated.”
An MSNBC analyst called Haley’s showing “a tough reality for her.” He pointed out that it was a closed primary, and therefore not open to non-Republicans. “When you’re just talking about Republican voters, [Haley is] really getting clobbered,” he said.
Exit polls revealed that 70% of voters who cast a ballot for Haley in the January 23 New Hampshire primary were not Republicans.
Despite pouring funds into the highly educated, secular, and liberal-leaning state, Haley still lost the New Hampshire contest to Trump by double digits.
Conservative comedian Chad Prather drew attention to Haley’s disastrous Nevada performance on X (formerly Twitter) Wednesday morning.
“How do you lose to no one?” he asked.
Former Rep. Doug Collins, R-GA, indicated that Haley should take the hint and exit the race.
“Nevada has perfectly summed up the GOP primary better than any analyst or reporter could ever attempt,” he wrote in an X post. “[Haley], the writing on the wall is clear! Face the facts, this race is over, time to focus on defeating Biden.”
Democratic columnist Ed Kilgore remarked in New York magazine’s Intelligencer, “Non-delegate-awarding primaries are often called ‘beauty contests.’ If that’s what this was, Haley’s performance was plug-ugly.”
Kilgore pointed out that in “the Democratic primary the same day, Joe Biden eased past ‘none of these candidates’ by an 89 percent to 6 percent margin.”
FOX News explained: “The confusion over [Nevada] having two competing contests dates to 2021, when Democrats, who at the time controlled both Nevada’s governor’s office and the legislature, passed a law changing the presidential nominating contest from long-held caucuses to a state-run primary.”
FOX continued:
The Nevada GOP objected, but last year their legal bid to stop the primary from going forward was rejected. In a twist, the judge in the case allowed the state Republicans to hold their own caucuses, where all 26 delegates will be up for grabs.
The state GOP ruled that candidates who put their name on the state-run primary ballot could not take part in the caucuses.
