What happens if Nikki Haley drops out of the presidential race?

Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and US ambassador to the United Nations, has been the last remaining challenger to Donald Trump for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination since Ron DeSantis dropped out of the race on Sunday 21 January, just before the New Hampshire primary.

She has faced intense pressure to follow his example ever since but has doggedly refused to do so, earning her the enmity of the Maga wing of the GOP.

Having finished third in the Iowa caucuses, Ms Haley went on to come second in New Hampshire, picking up 43.2 per cent of the vote to Mr Trump’s 54.3 per cent, prompting the frontrunner to express his irritation after she delivered an upbeat address to her supporters rather than admit defeat and bow out.

The former president has tried everything, from labelling her with belittling nicknames (“Birdbrain”, “Tricky Nikki”) to threatening her donors with excommunication from his movement and taunting her over her husband’s absence from the campaign trail (Major Michael Haley is deployed overseas with the South Carolina Army National Guard), but nothing has so far worked.

No matter how many times Trump allies like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Vivek Ramaswamy and Tim Scott take to the cable news channels to publicly call for her to step aside, she simply will not do it.

Losing in humiliating fashion to the “none of these candidates” box on Nevada ballot papers earlier this month did not weaken her resolve, nor has consistently disappointing polling, the latest example of which from Suffolk University/USA Today forecasts her losing again to Mr Trump in her home state of South Carolina on Saturday by 63 per cent to 35 per cent, or two-to-one.

Few candidates tend to survive a trouncing on