Nikki Haley turns to Michigan, where another uphill climb awaits her

Michigan is a battleground in the general election, and Nikki Haley, defeated again by former President Donald J. Trump in South Carolina, has made an election pitch for months.

Trump cannot win in November, she has argued, and will probably say so again on Sunday at her rally in Detroit. Trump narrowly lost Michigan to Joseph R. Biden Jr. in 2020. after a presidential term that alienated independent and suburban women, the segments of the electorate that make up a strong part of Ms. Haley’s small but not insignificant base. And her campaign has listed the state as one of more than a dozen crucial to her path to the nomination because it has primaries that are not limited to registered Republicans.

But the difficulty for Ms. Haley in Michigan, which holds its primaries on Tuesday, is similar to that in early voting states: She is running for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination, and the base remains with him. The strength she has shown among more moderate voters, even Democrats, has not been enough to overcome his significant lead.

Richard Czuba, an independent pollster in Lansing, Michigan, said the state has a long history of Republican and Democratic voters crossing the border during presidential primaries to overturn the battle and send a message. But he predicted little chance of that for Ms. Haley. The results of this year’s Republican primaries seem so self-evident, thanks largely to Trump’s dominance, that his polling firm has stopped even bothering to survey voters, he added.

“There is no race,” he said.

Ms. Haley’s campaign just began its first television advertising in the state last week, targeting the Detroit area with part of what her officials said was a half-million dollar purchase in the state. Her allied super PAC reported spending another half million on ads in the Michigan marketplace on Saturday following its loss in South Carolina, according to federal filings.

Ms. Haley arrives in the state with little to no momentum, even as she has continued to collect donations. She is expected to hold more fundraisers across the country this week, following a rescheduled rally on Monday in Grand Rapids.

Her loss in South Carolina on Saturday was her first ever in her home state, where she rose to become the first female governor. Although she outperformed the polls there, with just under 40 percent of the vote, she still fell short of her own benchmark: She did no better than the 43 percent support she received in New Hampshire in January. In her election night speech and in a video released Sunday, she promised as much to continue the fightMs. Haley argued that the percentages were about the same, casting herself as the voice of those seeking an alternative to a Trump-Biden rematch.

Polls in the states she is expected to visit this week, including Colorado, Minnesota, North Carolina, Utah and Virginia, show her trailing far behind Mr. Trump.

Hours before the final ballots were cast in South Carolina, Ms. Haley appeared to suggest that a phase-out could be in sight.

“We’re going to continue until Super Tuesday,” she told reporters on Kiawah Island, where she voted with her family at a polling station in a gated community near her home. “That’s as far as I’ve thought when it comes to the future.”

Michigan will award only 16 of the 55 delegates based on the results of Tuesday’s primary. The remainder will be allocated at the convention on March 2, in a process likely to favor Trump.

The state will provide an interesting background. Mr. Trump focused on the Michigan vote in his efforts to undermine the 2020 election. He won the state by nearly 11,000 votes in 2016, and lost it to Mr. Biden by more than 150,000 votes during his re-election in 2020. Mr. Trump has since kept a grip on the state’s Republican Party as it enters a political maelstrom of warring parties.

Dennis Darnoi, a longtime Republican strategist in Michigan, also rejected the idea that Democrats and left-leaning independents could help Ms. Haley if they have their own competition. Liberal groups have called for a protest vote against President Biden over his response to the war between Israel and Hamas. Democratic supporters of the president have withdrawn.

Mr. Darnoi recalled that the Haley campaign initially appeared to be sending many text messages to the state’s potential voters, but that communication had broken down and been intermittent. Her ground game was “pretty non-existent,” he said.

“The primary voter in Michigan is very supportive of Donald Trump. They are very excited to vote for him,” Mr Darnoi said, adding that there did not seem to be a place for anyone else.