There are now two Republican candidates for the party’s 2024 presidential nomination: the guy who earned the nomination in the past two contests and a woman who had said she wouldn’t run against him.
In a video published Tuesday morning, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations (under Donald Trump) Nikki Haley announced her intention to seek the nomination. She took subtle jabs at her former boss and current competitor, highlighting the Republican Party’s consistent failure to win the popular vote in presidential elections (as Trump twice failed to do), and other things.
But three lines in Haley’s video capture the political moment particularly well — and serve as an effective reminder of why she is unlikely to win the party’s nomination.
Sign up for How To Read This Chart, a weekly data newsletter from Philip Bump
The first important line was the second sentence of the video.
ADVERTISING
“I was the proud daughter of Indian immigrants. Not black, not white. I was different.” Haley is a native of South Carolina, the state where she would go on to become governor. Born in 1972, she would, indeed, have been unusual in the state. In the census completed two years earlier, 99.7 percent of the state population was either White or Black — meaning that Haley and her family were part of only a small fraction of South Carolina’s population.
It had been only a few years earlier that immigration restrictions in place since the beginning of the 20th century were relaxed, allowing more immigration from Asia, Mexico and Central America. Over the following half-century, immigration was a central reason that the United States became more diverse. The civil rights-era framing of race as White vs. Black still largely defines our understanding of racism, but race in the country today doesn’t fall neatly along those lines.
In 2020, 1 in 8 residents of South Carolina were a race besides White or Black — different, like Haley. Nationally, nearly a third were.
An interesting and important shift in how race is understood is reflected in the graph above. Notice that the non-White population of New Mexico (and other mostly southwestern states) jumped in the period from 1970 to 1980. That’s a function of how the Census Bureau captured Hispanic identity, a grouping implemented in full in the 1980 Census. Because we changed how we measure race, our understanding of the country’s racial complexion evolved. A similar change from 2010 to 2020 also gave a more nuanced, less rigid view of race in the country.
Being racially “different” is offered by Haley in her announcement video clearly to position her as standing outside of the historical White-Black line of racial tension. It’s a presentation of race that’s meant to appeal to Republicans who want to treat racism as sufficiently addressed, who want to insist that the United States is now colorblind. But Haley’s inadvertent invocation of America’s racial complexity is also a reminder that the Republican Party is heavily dependent on White votes — and on exacerbation of racial fears — for its recent success.
The second important line in the video:
“Republicans have lost the popular vote in seven out of the last eight presidential elections. That has to change.” This is true. The only time the Republican candidate has won the popular vote since 1988 was when George W. Bush did it in 2004.
After the party lost the 2012 election, there was some internal reflection on the need to expand its appeal outside its core base of White Americans. This was the Barack Obama era, after all; it seemed that demography was pushing inevitably toward Democratic electoral dominance. Instead, Trump came along and showed a different path forward: Wring every possible vote out of White America, particularly in the Midwest. It worked, once.
But consider the results of the 2020 election. The only racial group to prefer Trump to Joe Biden was Whites. Trump did as well as he did — losing the popular vote by a wide margin but the electoral college vote more narrowly — in part because Whites are vastly overrepresented in the electorate. (Non-Hispanic) White Americans made up 57 percent of the population in 2020 but 72 percent of the presidential vote, according to Pew Research Center’s analysis of turnout. By contrast, Hispanic U.S. residents made up almost 20 percent of the population but only 10 percent of the vote. They preferred Biden by 21 points.
Haley’s not making an explicit argument for expanding the party’s appeal to non-White voters, although, 10 years after the 2012 loss, the party has again started making noise about such an outreach effort. But it’s clear that a nominee like Haley — a woman who isn’t White — could bolster the idea that the Republican Party isn’t primarily the domain of White men.
ADVERTISING
Bringing us to the third important line.
“It’s time for a new generation of leadership …” This incorporates everything above, given the wide difference in the racial composition of Trump’s generation (born before immigration laws were loosened) and her own. Haley, 51, is a member of Generation X hoping to appeal to the heavily baby-boomer membership of the Republican Party. Forgive my bias on the subject, given that I’ve written a book on it, but the framing of Haley as young instead of old — contrasting her with Trump, who turns 77 this year — is an effort to get ahead of a trend that hasn’t yet taken root within the GOP.
Haley’s pitch probably would work much better among a Democratic electorate, given that Republicans are much older than Democrats. About a third of Republicans are already of retirement age. It may be true that “a new generation of leadership” — meaning, obviously, a younger leader — would appeal more to a broader range of Americans. Particularly when that leader is not White, as a much higher percentage of younger Americans are than older Americans. But there’s little sense that the Republican primary electorate is more worried about having a general election candidate who can appeal to moderates and Democrats than they are worried about the controversies and hyperventilation that permeates conservative media.
Haley is the sort of candidate whom party leaders will be eager to see more of in the coming years. But, as polling already suggests, she’s probably not the sort of candidate that party voters are interested in.
In a video published Tuesday morning, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations (under Donald Trump) Nikki Haley announced her intention to seek the nomination. She took subtle jabs at her former boss and current competitor, highlighting the Republican Party’s consistent failure to win the popular vote in presidential elections (as Trump twice failed to do), and other things.
But three lines in Haley’s video capture the political moment particularly well — and serve as an effective reminder of why she is unlikely to win the party’s nomination.
Sign up for How To Read This Chart, a weekly data newsletter from Philip Bump
The first important line was the second sentence of the video.
ADVERTISING
“I was the proud daughter of Indian immigrants. Not black, not white. I was different.” Haley is a native of South Carolina, the state where she would go on to become governor. Born in 1972, she would, indeed, have been unusual in the state. In the census completed two years earlier, 99.7 percent of the state population was either White or Black — meaning that Haley and her family were part of only a small fraction of South Carolina’s population.
It had been only a few years earlier that immigration restrictions in place since the beginning of the 20th century were relaxed, allowing more immigration from Asia, Mexico and Central America. Over the following half-century, immigration was a central reason that the United States became more diverse. The civil rights-era framing of race as White vs. Black still largely defines our understanding of racism, but race in the country today doesn’t fall neatly along those lines.
In 2020, 1 in 8 residents of South Carolina were a race besides White or Black — different, like Haley. Nationally, nearly a third were.
An interesting and important shift in how race is understood is reflected in the graph above. Notice that the non-White population of New Mexico (and other mostly southwestern states) jumped in the period from 1970 to 1980. That’s a function of how the Census Bureau captured Hispanic identity, a grouping implemented in full in the 1980 Census. Because we changed how we measure race, our understanding of the country’s racial complexion evolved. A similar change from 2010 to 2020 also gave a more nuanced, less rigid view of race in the country.
Being racially “different” is offered by Haley in her announcement video clearly to position her as standing outside of the historical White-Black line of racial tension. It’s a presentation of race that’s meant to appeal to Republicans who want to treat racism as sufficiently addressed, who want to insist that the United States is now colorblind. But Haley’s inadvertent invocation of America’s racial complexity is also a reminder that the Republican Party is heavily dependent on White votes — and on exacerbation of racial fears — for its recent success.
The second important line in the video:
“Republicans have lost the popular vote in seven out of the last eight presidential elections. That has to change.” This is true. The only time the Republican candidate has won the popular vote since 1988 was when George W. Bush did it in 2004.
After the party lost the 2012 election, there was some internal reflection on the need to expand its appeal outside its core base of White Americans. This was the Barack Obama era, after all; it seemed that demography was pushing inevitably toward Democratic electoral dominance. Instead, Trump came along and showed a different path forward: Wring every possible vote out of White America, particularly in the Midwest. It worked, once.
But consider the results of the 2020 election. The only racial group to prefer Trump to Joe Biden was Whites. Trump did as well as he did — losing the popular vote by a wide margin but the electoral college vote more narrowly — in part because Whites are vastly overrepresented in the electorate. (Non-Hispanic) White Americans made up 57 percent of the population in 2020 but 72 percent of the presidential vote, according to Pew Research Center’s analysis of turnout. By contrast, Hispanic U.S. residents made up almost 20 percent of the population but only 10 percent of the vote. They preferred Biden by 21 points.
Haley’s not making an explicit argument for expanding the party’s appeal to non-White voters, although, 10 years after the 2012 loss, the party has again started making noise about such an outreach effort. But it’s clear that a nominee like Haley — a woman who isn’t White — could bolster the idea that the Republican Party isn’t primarily the domain of White men.
ADVERTISING
Bringing us to the third important line.
“It’s time for a new generation of leadership …” This incorporates everything above, given the wide difference in the racial composition of Trump’s generation (born before immigration laws were loosened) and her own. Haley, 51, is a member of Generation X hoping to appeal to the heavily baby-boomer membership of the Republican Party. Forgive my bias on the subject, given that I’ve written a book on it, but the framing of Haley as young instead of old — contrasting her with Trump, who turns 77 this year — is an effort to get ahead of a trend that hasn’t yet taken root within the GOP.
Haley’s pitch probably would work much better among a Democratic electorate, given that Republicans are much older than Democrats. About a third of Republicans are already of retirement age. It may be true that “a new generation of leadership” — meaning, obviously, a younger leader — would appeal more to a broader range of Americans. Particularly when that leader is not White, as a much higher percentage of younger Americans are than older Americans. But there’s little sense that the Republican primary electorate is more worried about having a general election candidate who can appeal to moderates and Democrats than they are worried about the controversies and hyperventilation that permeates conservative media.
Haley is the sort of candidate whom party leaders will be eager to see more of in the coming years. But, as polling already suggests, she’s probably not the sort of candidate that party voters are interested in.
