妮基·黑利一再承诺继续参加共和党初选反对唐纳德·特朗普直到超级星期二这为这位前州长兼大使提供了最后的机会，让他在2024年党内提名的代表人数上赶上前总统。
但海莉在周二之后也多次对她的计划进行了回避，将当天15个州的结果变成了她竞选过程中的一个潜在关键时刻。
“超级星期二，我们将努力保持竞争力。我希望我们继续前进，”她周五表示。“但这一切都关乎我们的竞争力。”
值得注意的是，她当天没有安排公开活动，甚至连标准的选举之夜派对都没有，而是将回到南卡罗来纳州的家中私下观看选举结果。
特朗普继续在民调中轻松击败海莉，目前尚不清楚她周二会在哪里取得重大成功，也不清楚她之后会做什么，尽管她对潜在的第三方竞选持怀疑态度，但目前拒绝具体说明她是否会在大选中支持特朗普。
最近几周变得明显的是海利关于其他保守派为什么不应该投票给特朗普的论点。
在其他批评中，她表示不确定特朗普如果第二次当选是否会遵守宪法，并警告说，如果共和党人选择他作为党内提名人，他们将在11月面临灾难，甚至称这种情况为国家的“自杀”。
对海莉来说，这是一个明显的语气转变。去年，海莉最初采取的策略是限制对特朗普的攻击，包括在初选辩论中表示，如果特朗普被判有罪，她将支持他成为候选人最近回来了。（他否认有不当行为。)
她在上个月的一次电台采访中坚持认为，特朗普的语气变化是故意的。
“我很自律，也很专注。我需要让（其他候选人）出局。海莉在“早餐俱乐部”节目中说:“我知道最后会是他。”
“一开始他并不是我的关注点。他现在是我的重心。”
挑战特朗普
事实上，海莉大大扩大了她对特朗普的攻击范围-指责他“转移”了共和党的一些核心原则，如削减支出和维持国际联盟，并质疑他77岁的年龄是否适合担任公职。
她还谴责特朗普支持他的儿媳成为国家共和党的一名重要领导人，并在周末警告说，如果他成功，“现在的RNC将只与唐纳德·特朗普有关”，并将变成他自己的“合法贿赂基金”，他的竞选团队对此予以否认。
特朗普进行了回击，侮辱海莉为“鸟人”，并表示民主党人更希望她与乔·拜登总统竞选，因为她“很容易被击败”。
在试图证明自己的观点时，海莉将共和党人比作在一艘正在下沉的船上，投票支持她而不是特朗普类似于跳进救生筏。
但这一信息似乎对她必须赢得的选民产生了影响。
她传达的信息的关键是，尽管特朗普迄今为止在初选中取得了成功，但她不认为他是一个可行的大选候选人，只要他在提名竞争中经常失去大约30%至40%的选票。
尽管如此，上个月末她的家乡南卡罗来纳州驳回了她关于可当选的论点。在初选出口民调中，82%的受访者表示特朗普可能在11月获胜，而59%的人对海利持相同看法。
到目前为止，除了一场提名竞争外，她输掉了所有提名竞争——周日晚上在华盛顿特区获得了她的第一场胜利，并以约1300张选票赢得了19名代表。相比之下，特朗普在南卡罗来纳州以约45.2万张选票击败了黑利。
她仍然落后特朗普约200张代表票- 247比43。
为了确保提名，共和党候选人需要1215张代表票，周二将有865张代表票可供争夺。特朗普竞选团队坚称，他们有望在3月晚些时候获得提名。
周二会发生什么
即使是盟友也不确定海莉可能会在哪里获胜——亿万富翁支持者查尔斯·科氏最近在海莉在南卡罗莱纳州失利后撤回了对她的支持，宣布将专注于共和党的国会竞选。
“我不能告诉你她在哪个州有机会，你知道，我不看民意调查和所有这类事情，”新罕布什尔州州长克里斯·苏努努在周末马萨诸塞州尼达姆的竞选集会上介绍她后告诉ABC新闻。
苏努努周二表示，马萨诸塞州对她来说可能是“关键”。她指出，海莉正在她能去的所有州进行竞选活动。
当被问及她在周二的竞选中获胜会是什么样时，他指出她将继续获得代表票，而不是获得比特朗普更多的选票，不过根据该党的规定，特朗普可以将她排除在加州等地的任何代表票之外，只要他的胜率超过50%。
苏努努说，如果海莉“取得几场胜利，那很好。但最重要的是确保民众、选民有发言权，希望有更多的州加入进来。”
由于她在更温和的共和党初选选民中相对受欢迎，海莉周二获得代表的最佳机会可能是在那些允许注册共和党人以外的人参加公开和半公开竞选的州。
作为她竞选团队急于利用这些潜在机会的一个迹象，海莉在过去一周专门在10个州进行了竞选活动，并在超级星期二之前发布了七位数的全国有线电视和数字广告。（最近几周，她的竞选团队更广泛地宣传了她的筹款实力，而她一直在追赶特朗普。)
尽管如此，海莉的竞选团队一直热衷于避免公布基准，候选人自己只是说她想成为一个人:有竞争力。
“我们认为在马萨诸塞州、科罗拉多州或佛蒙特州、缅因州、弗吉尼亚州等州，她可能会非常接近，可能在40%的范围内，这对我们来说将是一个胜利，”支持海莉的超级PAC独立党联合主席弗兰克·劳金说。
根据联邦选举委员会的记录，由劳金和其他五名商人担任主席的政治行动委员会主要专注于选举通常不会在初选中投票的温和派和独立选民，迄今为止已花费160万美元支持哈利。
“我们现在在新英格兰各州非常活跃——特别是马萨诸塞州，但也包括缅因州和佛蒙特州。劳金补充说，列举了所有进行公开和半公开初选的州。
虽然各州的规则有所不同，但共和党初选通常允许领先者获得大量代表，采用彻底的赢家通吃制度或按比例授予代表，直到候选人获得50%以上的选票。
根据538的民调平均值，这可能会给加利福尼亚州和德克萨斯州等州的海利带来坏消息。这两个州是最大的代表授予州，特朗普目前在这两个州大幅领先。
Will Super Tuesday be Haley's last stand against Trump? It's 'all about how competitive we can be'
Nikki Haley has repeatedly promised to remain in the Republican primary race against Donald Trump until Super Tuesday, which offers the last big chance for the former governor and ambassador to start catching up to the former president in delegates for their party's 2024 nomination.
But Haley has also repeatedly hedged on her plans after Tuesday, turning the day's results -- across 15 states -- into a potentially pivotal moment in the course of her campaign.
"Super Tuesday, we're going to try to be competitive. I hope we go forward," she said on Friday. "But this is all about how competitive we can be."
Notably, she has no public events scheduled that day, not even the standard election night party, and will instead be back home in South Carolina to watch the results privately.
With Trump continuing to handily beat Haley in the polls, it remains unclear where she could see significant success on Tuesday or what she'll do after that, though she has sounded skeptical of a potential third-party bid -- while declining to specify, right now, if she would endorse Trump in the general election.
What has become clear in recent weeks is Haley's argument for why other conservatives shouldn't vote for Trump.
Among other criticism, she has said she is not sure Trump would follow the Constitution if elected a second time and warned of disaster for Republicans in November if they select him as the party's nominee, going as far as to call such a scenario "suicide" for the country.
It's a marked shift in tone for Haley, who initially pursued a strategy -- last year -- of limiting her attacks against Trump, including saying in a primary debate that she would support him as the nominee if he were convicted of a crime, which she recently walked back. (He denies wrongdoing.)
She maintained during a radio interview last month that the change in tone on Trump was intentional.
"I was disciplined and focused. I needed to get the [other candidates] out. I knew it was going to be him at the end," Haley said on "The Breakfast Club."
"He was not my focus in the beginning. He is my focus now."
Taking on Trump
Indeed, Haley has vastly broadened the scope of her attacks against Trump -- accusing him of "shifting" the GOP away from what she has said are some of the party's core principles like cutting spending and maintaining international alliances and questioning his fitness for office in light of his age at 77.
She has also decried Trump endorsing his daughter-in-law to become a key leader of the national Republican Party, warning over the weekend that if he succeeds, "the RNC now is just going to be about Donald Trump" and would morph into his own "legal slush fund," which his campaign denies.
Trump has fired back, insulting Haley as a "birdbrain" and saying Democrats would prefer her to run against President Joe Biden since she's "easy to beat."
In trying to make her case, Haley has likened Republicans to being aboard a sinking ship and voting for her over Trump as akin to jumping in a life raft.
But that message appears to be taking on water with the voters she must win over.
The crux of her message has been that despite Trump's success in the primaries so far, she does not believe he is a viable general election candidate as long as he is regularly losing roughly 30% to 40% of the vote in nominating contests.
Nonetheless, her electability argument was rejected in her home state of South Carolina late last month. Eighty-two percent of people surveyed in a primary exit poll said Trump was likely to win in November, versus 59% who said the same of Haley.
She has lost all but one of the nominating contests so far -- securing her first victory in Washington, D.C., on Sunday night and winning 19 of its delegates with about 1,300 votes. By comparison, Trump beat Haley in South Carolina with about 452,000 votes.
And she still trails Trump by some 200 delegates -- 247 to 43.
To secure the nomination, a Republican candidate needs 1,215 delegates, and 865 are up for grabs on Tuesday. The Trump campaign has insisted they are on track to clinch the nod later in March.
What Tuesday could hold
Even allies are not sure where Haley may emerge victorious -- something billionaire backer Charles Koch recently signaled after his super PAC pulled its support for Haley following her loss in South Carolina, announcing it would instead focus on congressional races for Republicans.
"I can't tell you what state she's got a shot, you know, I don't look at the polls and all that sort of thing," New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, a Haley surrogate, told ABC News after introducing her at a campaign rally over the weekend in Needham, Massachusetts.
Sununu, who said Massachusetts was potentially "key" for her on Tuesday, noted that Haley is hitting the campaign trail in all of the states she can.
Asked what a win would look like on Tuesday for her campaign, he pointed to her continuing to accrue delegates rather than getting more votes than Trump, though under the party's rules, Trump can shut her out of any delegates in places like California as long as he wins more than 50%.
Sununu said that if Haley "pulls a couple of wins out, that's great. But the most important thing is making sure that that folks, voters, have a say, and hopefully there's more states to come."
Owing to her relative popularity among more moderate GOP primary voters, Haley's best chances at securing delegates on Tuesday will likely be in states with open and semi-open contests that allow people beyond registered Republicans to participate.
A sign of her campaign's eagerness to capitalize on those potential opportunities, Haley has spent the last week campaigning exclusively in 10 states with such primaries and released a seven-figure national cable and digital ad buy ahead of Super Tuesday. (Her campaign has more broadly touted the strength of her fundraising in recent weeks while she has gone after Trump.)
Still, Haley's campaign has been keen to avoid putting out benchmarks, with the candidate herself saying simply she wants to be one thing: competitive.
"We think in states like Massachusetts or Colorado or Vermont, Maine, Virginia, she can come very close, perhaps in the 40% range, and that would be a win for us," said Frank Laukien, co-chair of the pro-Haley super PAC Independents Moving the Needle.
The political action committee, which Laukien chairs along with five other businesspeople, has primarily focused on turning out moderate and independent voters who don't typically vote in primaries, spending $1.6 million so far in supporting Haley, according to Federal Election Commission records.
"We're very active right now in the New England states -- Massachusetts in particular, but also Maine and Vermont. There is a ground game," Laukien added, listing states that all run open and semi-open primaries.
While rules vary from state to state, Republican primaries generally allow for front-runners to secure large numbers of delegates, employing outright winner-take-all systems or awarding delegates proportionally until a candidate obtains more than 50% of the vote.
That could spell bad news for Haley in states such as California and Texas -- the two largest delegate-awarding states, where Trump is currently leading by wide margins, according to 538's polling average.
"I don't want to talk about how long y'all think I'm gonna stay in this," Haley told reporters ahead of a rally in Utah last week after being asked about her plans beyond Super Tuesday. "I want the conversation to be: Where are we going in the country?"
