While Haley spent the day at campaign stops urging voters to “Make America Normal Again,” the former UN ambassador remains at least 30 percentage points behind Trump in most polls.

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“We can either do more of the same — and more of the same is not just Joe Biden, more of the same is Donald Trump — or we can elect a new generational leader that will lead us forward with solutions for the future,” she said on her final campaign stop in Mount Pleasant on Friday night.

In a bid to thwart the former president’s surge, one pro-Democracy group, Primary Pivot, has embarked on a grassroots effort to sway Democrats who did not vote earlier this month in Joe Biden’s South Carolina primary race (and are therefore eligible to cast a vote in the Republican primary) to support former UN ambassador.

The group has gone to black churches, civic centres, and sent hundreds of thousands of text messages and emails to people in the hope of mobilising more numbers for Haley, arguing that she will at least leave the Oval Office when the time comes.

“Who would Democrats rather lose to? Would they rather lose to Nikki Haley or someone who we legitimately feel is a threat to democracy?” said the group’s senior adviser Christopher Richardson, a South Carolinian who has traditionally voted for the Democrats in primary races.

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However, local Democrat strategist Antjuan Seawright said swaying people towards Haley was “a disservice to the cause”.

“At the end of the day, we need to be unified on all fronts as Democrats,” he said. “Why should we be trying to bail her out with her policy agenda which, in some cases, is just as reckless as Donald Trump’s?”

Back at the Trump rally in Rock Hill, supporters took a much different view. A week after a New York judge ordered the former president to pay more than $US350 million ($535 million) for fraudulent business dealings, Sheila McKenna was adamant that Trump was being unfairly targeted. The staggering civil fraud judgment against Trump was finalised in New York on Friday, with the former president on the hook for more than $US454 million ($693 million) once fines and interest are included.

“They’re doing everything they can to try to take him down and to try to destroy him financially,” she said. “They wanted to throw him in jail because they know they can’t beat him. It’s political persecution.”

Her friend, Amy Walters, agreed.

“The court system is corrupt,” she said. “But he’s standing up for himself – and us. He’s not a politician, he’s not a globalist, he’s not deep state. He’s his own person, and he thinks for himself.”

As for Nikki Haley? “She needs to get out of the race and get behind Trump,” Walters said.

On the side of the line, another voter, Shank Rock, stood in a white Trump sweatsuit and star-shaped sunglasses.

He said he believed Haley was a “good person” and “I think she would make a good president. I just don’t think that she would be a better president than Trump.”

Biden, on the other hand, was too old to instil confidence on the world stage, he said.

“Most of the times, you really don’t know what’s going on with his age or his head. You can tell in his speeches. Is he able to do the job? It doesn’t look good for him.“

South Carolina’s primary race comes on the back of Trump victories in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada.

But a hometown defeat would be humiliating for Haley, who grew up in the South Carolina city of Bamberg as “the proud daughter of Indian immigrants”, began her political career in the state legislature and later became a two-term governor.

She insists she will continue for as long as she can, but much of this depends on her ability to attract donors to keep funding her campaign all the way to Super Tuesday on March 5, when most of the primaries take place and about a third of delegates are up for grabs.

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