Trump battles Haley on her South Carolina home turf

Republicans and unaffiliated voters headed to the polls Saturday for South Carolina’s GOP presidential showdown between front-runner Donald Trump and Nikki Haley, the state’s former governor — and Trump’s sole remaining rival for the party’s nomination.

The former president has swept all of the race’s first four contests, making him the prohibitive favorite in Saturday’s election.

A decisive win for him in Haley’s home state would all but guarantee his victory at July’s Republican convention, while a stronger-than-expected finish for Haley could boost her appeal for Trump-doubting voters.

Haley, 52, served two terms as the Palmetto State’s governor before joining Trump’s first presidential administration as his ambassador to the United Nations in 2017.

But surveys showed her consistently trailing Trump by up to 28 points among likely South Carolina voters.

Haley vowed this week to stay in the race until the bitter end — even if she loses all 50 of her state’s convention delegates to Trump.

“On Sunday, I’ll still be running for president,” Haley said Tuesday in Greenville, SC.

“I’m not going anywhere,” she said, promising to campaign “every day until the last person votes” — and announcing a torrent of appearances in Michigan, Minnesota, Colorado, Utah, Virginia, Washington, D.C., North Carolina and Massachusetts between Sunday and March 2.

“I’ll keep fighting until the American people close the door,” Haley said.

Her South Carolina supporters expressed grim resolve in the days leading up to Saturday’s vote.

“I think she’s holding out for one of the cases against [Trump] to keep him from running for president, and she’s going to be the one that steps in,” one woman told The Post at Haley’s Greenville event.

Others wished for her to abandon the Republican Party altogether.

“My hope is that she would run as an independent,” Scott Hammond, another local voter, said at a Haley rally in Beaufort, SC on Wednesday. “I think it’s going to be difficult for her to beat Trump in the primary.”

But South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, who dropped out of the GOP presidential sweepstakes months ago and endorsed Trump following the former president’s decisive victory in the Iowa caucuses, urged Haley to end her White House bid “for the good of the country.”

“I made the determination myself back in November that America wanted someone that was more forceful, more provocative, and a little bit more rambunctious,” Scott — a former Haley ally who gained his Senate seat when she named him to replace retiring Sen Jim DeMint in 2012 — said Thursday.

Trump held 63 GOP delegates on Saturday before the South Carolina results were tallied, with 1,215 delegates needed to secure the party’s nomination — 874 of them up for grabs on March 5, Super Tuesday — and Haley trailing far behind at 17.