Haley says she's going all out against Trump. Here's her plan.

A week before the Republican presidential primary in South Carolina, where polls show her trailing by an insurmountable margin, Nikki Haley was in Texas promising to go national, as most primary candidates, even in the direst of circumstances, are wont to do .

Despite big losses in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada, and the long odds she faces in South Carolina, her home state, Ms. Haley shows no signs of softening. She's still raking in donations and building her national footprint as she promises to take her party past former President Donald J. Trump.

“He said he's going to spend more time in the courtroom than on the campaign trail,” she said of Mr. Trump in San Antonio on Friday, referring to the hours he spent in New York last week confronting criminals and criminals. civil cases. 'But I'll tell you what we're going to do. We will follow the campaign trail.”

Ms. Haley, a former governor of South Carolina and ambassador to the United Nations under Trump, exudes confidence even as her path to victory looks grim. Many South Carolina polls have her trailing Trump by about 30 points — and the picture after next week's election doesn't look much brighter.

If Ms. Haley goes ahead with her plans to stay in the race outside of South Carolina as she has promised, here's a look at how she plans to win her long-distance bid nationally.

The card

The Haley Campaign has announced teams of elected officials, business leaders and prominent community members to help lead their efforts in Alaska, California, Georgia, Idaho, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Utah and Washington. Her “National Women for Nikki Coalition,” which has chapters in all 50 states and Puerto Rico, has gone into full swing, with a mission to bring suburban women to justice rejected by Mr. Trump.

On the day after the South Carolina primary, Ms. Haley said that regardless of the outcome, she will head to Michigan, where its own contest will be held on Feb. 27. From there, she has plans to travel the country leading up to Super Tuesday, the biggest day of the primary season, and the last real chance she will have to prove she can change the course of the nomination. The expected stops are Colorado, Minnesota, Utah and Virginia.

Ms. Haley is betting her candidacy on courting independents and new Republicans in Michigan and in 11 Super Tuesday states where Republican primaries are not limited to voters affiliated with her own party. But that strategy failed in New Hampshire, and it has shown weaknesses with its own base, drawing support from only 29 percent of university graduates Republicans nationally, according to a CNN poll, while Trump had 55 percent of the same demographic. Another Morning Consult Tracking Poll showed Ms. Haley trailing Mr. Trump by large margins in every Super Tuesday state.

Mr. Trump has taken his own action in the Super Tuesday states, announcing nearly 80 endorsements from state parties and elected officials in 14 states. And his team has left little to chance: He and his allies have engaged in a backroom campaign to twist the delegates' rules in his favor, and he has said that Ms. Haley's donors would be “permanently barred from MAGA -camp.”

The message

Ms. Haley and her allies have consistently criticized Mr. Trump in national media appearances and in television and digital advertisements. Her message has remained largely consistent: that it is time for a new generational leader who can take her party beyond Mr. Trump's “chaos.” But her lines of attack underline that lately they have become sharper and more numerous. She has criticized him for discrediting her husband, Major Michael Haley; for suggesting he would encourage Russian aggression against U.S. allies in Europe; for skewing the number of participants; and for tightening his grip on party institutions, including the Republican National Committee.

She has continued to criticize Trump for devoting time and campaign donations to his legal troubles. She has tried to label him and President Biden as “grumpy old men.”

But as of last week, Ms. Haley had not spent money on television advertising outside Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. Her allied super PAC, Stand for America Inc., had invested only about $144,900 in other states, according to AdImpact, a media tracking company. By comparison, Trump's campaign spent nearly six times as much nationwide, or about $855,200.

Karoline Leavitt, Trump's national press secretary, pointed to Ms. Haley's losses, claiming he would not just “crush” her in her own backyard and “demolish her on Super Tuesday.” “Only a bird-brain would stay in this race,” she said in a statement, using Trump's insulting nickname for Ms. Haley.

The finance

Trump's war chest dwarfs Ms. Haley's campaign funds. At the end of December, he had more than $33 million cash on hand, while Ms. Haley had $14.6 million.

But as it has been from the beginning of her campaign, one bright spot for Ms. Haley is her ability to raise money. She raked in $16.5 million in January, her highest monthly total to date. She has the support of some wealthy donors. Her campaign turned Trump's ultimatum to her donors into an opportunity to sell about 20,000 T-shirts that read “Barred.” Forever.” Her campaign says she raised at least $2.7 million from fundraisers in Texas and California this month, and another $1 million in the 48 hours after Mr. Trump disparaged Ms. Haley's husband at a rally.

The rationale

In interviews, some of Ms. Haley's high-priced donors in Texas and California echoed her focus on the advanced age of Mr. Trump and President Biden, citing Mr. Trump's lawsuits as signs that anything remains possible in the race. Trump spent Thursday in a Manhattan courtroom on criminal charges stemming from a hush money payment to a porn star in 2016. A New York judge on Friday ordered him to pay a fine of nearly $355 million plus interest after he held him liable for conspiracy. to manipulate his net worth.

“A lot can happen in politics and in our legal system,” said Timothy Draper, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and Haley donor. “And the American people usually come to their senses when they go to the polls.”

At Gilley's Dallas South Side Music Hall, an upscale honky-tonk, Jack Matthews, the owner and a prominent developer, said he had an easier time raising money for Ms. Haley now than when he started in the early days of her campaign. “Some people are afraid to support her because of retaliation with Trump,” he acknowledged. But many others, he said, “say, 'We need change.'”

His venue, where Ms. Haley spoke to more than 1,000 people on Thursday evening, a year after the start of her presidential bid, has a history of campaign history. There, President Biden held a rally in 2020 where his former Democratic rivals for the nomination endorsed him over an insurgent Bernie Sanders in a show of power for the moderate wing of their party.

Now Ms. Haley is pursuing a Biden-like strategy, but finds herself in Mr. Sanders' position. Nevertheless, she continued to plead her case.

“Everything he touches, we lose,” Ms. Haley said, portraying Trump as an agent of “chaos” for Congress, the country and Republicans' prospects in November.