It almost seemed like common sense to assume that new presidential candidate Nikki Haley would be popular among Republicans in the state that she governed, but South Carolina voters have made it very clear that Donald Trump seems to be the candidate they want to take back the White House in 2024.

According to a new survey of primary voters in South Carolina, former President Donald Trump carries a massive lead over Haley 35%-16%. To add insult to injury, she’s not even in second place, that spot belongs to Florida governor and increasingly expected GOP candidate Ron DeSantis, currently sitting at 22%.

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Home Game Advantage Gone

According to pollster Rich Shaftan, Haley has “severe” challenges ahead of her as she vies for the nomination of her party.

“70% of South Carolina Republicans do not mention Haley as a first, second, or third place choice despite her 100% name ID,” said Shaftan.

The survey, which consists of 300 regular GOP primary voters, shows that while Haley isn’t disliked, she isn’t as favored as Trump or DeSantis who are regularly going after the Biden administration and making headlines for themselves by championing conservative causes.

According to Shaftan, “South Carolina voters like Haley personally, but other than giving her credit for a good economy and hurricane/flood relief, there’s little people can identity as actual accomplishments as (former) governor. The shallow perception illustrates why Haley is losing her home state to an outsider governor and a former president she once served.”

In the survey, Shaftan asked voters why they liked/disliked most about the GOP candidates. In regards to Haley, she received high marks for “good job 26%, for the people 7%, honest 6%,” but negatives included “inexperienced/not ready 14%, weak 12%, quits projects 10%” and rather hilariously, “stabbed Trump in the back 6%”

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Who Will Follow?

While many names have been tossed into the hat of other potential Republican candidates to jump into the 2024 election— including but not limited to former Secretary Mike Pompeo, Vice President Mike Pence, current Senators Ted Cruz and Tim Scott, as well as Gov. Ron DeSantis— the only other conservative openly discussing their intention to declare a run is entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy.

The conservative businessman and author of books such as “Woke Inc.” and “Nation of Victims,” recently paid a visit to Iowa to meet with potential donors. On a recent appearance on Fox Business, he made his intentions clear that he’ll be making a decision as to declare his candidacy or not very soon.

“My generation is hungry for purpose and meaning,” said Ramaswamy in a tweet which included a clip of his recent news appearance. “We’ve given up on the things that used to do the job: faith, patriotism, hard work, family. We now embrace secular religions from Covidism to climates to gender ideology instead. Time to fix that.”

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