NEWBERRY, S.C. — Everything about Nikki Haley’s latest barnstorm through South Carolina was intended to evoke a candidate on the upswing.

She had a sleek, new navy-blue campaign bus with her name on it. Her campaign, backed by a fresh infusion of funds, pumped $2 million more into ads, for a total $6 million buy. And she had fresh lines of attack to deploy against former President Donald Trump.

But the stops, carefully tailored to highlight her ties to the place she calls home and remind voters of her past political successes in the state, frequently served more as reminders of how much has changed here since her last winning bid for governor. Haley hosted fewer attendees at events in some of the more conservative strongholds crucial to a victory in the Feb. 24 primary. She drew larger, enthusiastic crowds at stops near the coast and around Charleston. Almost everywhere she went, even staunch supporters excited to see her speak conceded that her chances were slim.

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“I am not a fan of Donald Trump,” said Robert Zangara, 74, a retired accountant who attended her tour stop Sunday with his wife at a strip mall in Orangeburg and plans to vote for her next week. “But I just don’t think she’s going to be the nominee.”

Nearly one year to the date since beginning her presidential campaign, Haley is still promising she will remain in the race through Super Tuesday, on March 5, regardless of the outcome in South Carolina, where she is trailing Trump by more than 30 points in polls. She has dismissed concerns that a loss would torch her path toward the nomination, or worse, her future political prospects, even as the momentum she enjoyed before the earlier nominating contests in January has all but disappeared.

In an interview with The New York Times in Los Angeles, she argued she was willing to be “David taking on Goliath” so that her children and everyone else’s would grow up in a better country. On Fox News on Tuesday, she was even more forceful in declaring the urgency of her quest when asked if she was worried about her career should she fail to clinch victory.

“That’s the problem with politics,” she said. “Donald Trump’s worried about his image. Joe Biden’s worried about his image. I’m not worried about mine.”

Haley named her bus tour the “Beast of the Southeast,” after the phrase an industry magazine used to describe South Carolina’s ferocious economic development under Haley’s leadership. Her first stop was at an opera house in Newberry, South Carolina, a small rural town in the state’s Midlands, where Haley, then an underdog candidate for governor, had one of her first big breakout moments on a debate stage in 2010.

Wearing “Trump is too chicken to debate” stickers, Mike and Susan Strouse, Republicans who count themselves as die-hard Haley supporters, said they had been following her rise since those days. They had voted for Trump twice but did not believe him to be a viable choice for president after his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

“I just feel in my heart that she is the best,” Mike Strouse said of Haley.

Introducing Haley earlier, Mayor Foster Senn of Newberry recalled that in 2010, just like now, Haley took on the establishment, challenging rivals no one thought she could beat. The state’s current establishment, including the governor and its two U.S. senators, has backed Trump over her. But while the opera house has a capacity of more than 1,000, Haley spoke outside, to an audience of about 150. On Monday, at a Harley-Davidson dealership in Elgin, South Carolina, she addressed around 50 people, and some chairs that had been set up went unfilled.

Her other visits included Bamberg, her rural hometown near Columbia, which drew people who said they knew and liked Haley and her family growing up. The town’s mayor, who recalled stories of Haley from childhood, would not commit to voting for her.

All the while, her regular boasts about South Carolina’s economy under her leadership, her personal story and her calls to imagine a different country “where there wasn’t so much anger and division” took a back seat to her fervent attacks on Trump.

In the past few weeks, she has reframed her stump speech to attack the former president over his mental acuity, legal issues and his role in the collapse of a Republican-led deal in Congress to address the arrival of migrants at the southern border. She has sought to brand Trump and Biden as “grumpy old men.” She has chastised fellow members of her party for feeding into Trump’s “chaos.”

More recently, she and her allies have spent days pummeling Trump over his disparaging comments about her husband, Maj. Michael Haley, a National Guardsman, and for suggesting he would encourage Russian aggression against U.S. allies in Europe.

The sharp turn against Trump is one that many Republicans looking for an anti-Trump alternative had long hoped she would take, though it comes after Trump has already won Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada — and surveys suggest his lead in South Carolina is only widening.

An aggressive approach toward Trump didn’t work for a one-time presidential rival, Chris Christie, a former governor of New Jersey. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who like Haley refrained from forcefully attacking Trump until the waning days of earlier contests, has already dropped out.

Scott H. Huffmon, the director of the statewide Winthrop Poll, one of the few regular surveys of voter attitudes in South Carolina, said the pivot most likely won’t help in a state where Trump is so popular with the Republican base. And her politicking and entreaties into more conservative areas might not move the needle, either.

“She’s doing what the textbook of the past says she should do to expand the base but this is absolutely a new era with Donald Trump in the race,” Huffmon said.

Longtime political strategists in the state expect her to do well in the major metro areas including Columbia and Charleston, where she drew an energetic crowd of 1,200 people this month, and along the coast. More challenging will be areas such as the more conservative Upstate, around Greenville.

Her most enthusiastic supporters at nearly all her events were members of her colorfully attired “Women for Nikki” coalition, who helped hype up her audiences by ringing tiny cowbells. But many had traveled in from out of state, and at a Saturday stop that drew only about 150 people in Gilbert, South Carolina, some 20 union protesters used hot pink swag to blend in only to interrupt Haley later with questions about what she planned to do for workers.

“How many of you are going to be disrupters like this? Go ahead and raise your hand,” Haley said after a third interruption.

Outside a market in Greenwood, South Carolina, Travis South, 47, a Republican and setup technician who programs robotics machines to make auto parts, said he had lost a close friend who backs Trump after he put up yard signs in support of Haley. He recalled her tenure as governor and admired her for her courage and character, he said, yet he still doubted her chances.

“The reality of it is, he is probably going to get it for four more years,” he said, predicting Trump would win the nomination and the White House. “But hopefully, she will be able to come back.”

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