Politics

‘A Very Loud Message’: Sean Hannity, Pollsters React To Nikki Haley’s Blowout Loss In Home State

Former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley speaking with the media after a campaign event with U.S. Senator Martha McSally at a home in Scottsdale, Arizona. (Flickr/Gage Skidmore)

Talk show host Sean Hannity and three pollsters said Monday that the results of Saturday’s Republican presidential primary were “a very loud message” to former Republican Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina.

Trump defeated Haley in the Republican presidential primary in South Carolina by a 20-point margin Saturday. Hannity discussed the result with Trump pollster John McLaughlin, Robert Cahaly of Trafalgar and Matt Towery of Insider Advantage, with McLaughlin describing how he told Trump the situation in South Carolina.

“I told him before the CPAC speech, we’re gonna win by around 20 points, and it would be a landslide, considering that 20 percent of all the people coming into the Republican primary had a past history of voting in democratic primaries and being were being recruited by the Haley people,” McLaughlin told Hannity on the latter’s radio show.

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Trump led Haley by 23.3% in the RealClearPolling average of polls for the South Carolina primary taken Feb. 12-23. Trafalgar Group, run by Cahaly, showed Trump winning the primary 59% to 38% in the final poll before voters cast their ballots, while Insider Advantage showed Trump with a 60% to 38% lead.

Trump received 59.8% of the vote in the primary election, compared to 39.5% for Haley, according to RealClearPolling.

“Losing her home state, where she was elected governor not once, but twice, I think, is a very loud message that is being sent to her,” Hannity said about the results. Hannity also noted that Haley’s speech after the South Carolina primary sounded like “a No Labels speech.”

Towery predicted that a No Labels candidate help would Trump in the November election. No Labels is a third partyseeking to field a centrist candidate in the November election.

“That No Labels candidate, in all effect will probably just take these suburban voters who don’t like Donald Trump and give them somewhere else to go,” Towery said.

“Maybe No Labels fits Nikki Haley better today,” Cahaly said in response to Hannity’s question. “But that really is the difference between 2016 and 2020: You take people that don’t want to be for Trump and give them some other choice other than Biden, which is where they ended up in 2020, you know, there was other candidates in 2016. You get a three-or-four-way race, and it’s very difficult for Trump to lose.”

Towery noted that some states had “sore loser” laws that might bar Haley from running on the “No Labels” ticket. Such laws prohibit candidates from running in a general election if they ran for and failed to secure a party’s nomination, according to Ballotpedia.

Haley did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.