It may be impossible to tease out of the exit-polling data in November, but Nikki Haley's voters may be the key to the whole presidential election. Haley bowed out of the race this morning while refusing to endorse Donald Trump, and her voters are very much up for grabs at this point (if primary election exit polling is any indication). So, to wax poetic: whither go the Haley voters, come November? To Biden? To Trump? To third-party candidates? Or to sit on the couch and refuse to vote? The answer is almost certainly going to be a mix of those options, and it may decide the whole contest.

Nikki Haley showed tenacity by staying in the race even long after it was obvious she had no chance of winning the Republican Party's nomination. She proved the point she set out to make, which was that even with the GOP overwhelmingly for Trump, there still exists a faction within the party that is not interested in seeing him run again and does not (yet) support him.

How big is that faction? Well, it's hard to tell. Haley's support varied state by state, from a high of 50 percent in Vermont (the only state she won) to a low of 12 percent in Alaska. As of this writing, Haley averaged 26 percent in all the Super Tuesday states combined. But it's too simplistic to assume that "one in four Republican voters didn't vote for Trump." Some states have open primaries, where Democrats can ask for a Republican ballot and vote in that primary instead of their own. Even where this is not an option, some Democrats changed their voter registrations to the GOP just so they could participate (since the Democratic contest was such a foregone conclusion, and thus boring to participate in). So Haley's support has been a mix of Democrats, independents, and Republicans. Of the Republicans, some are ardently "never Trump" and some not so much. Many saw Trump as a flawed candidate with too much baggage and wanted a different option, but will also likely return to the GOP fold in November and pull the lever for Trump. Others will (as the label indicates) never vote for Trump -- but that doesn't automatically translate to a vote for Joe Biden (they may just stay home in disgust).

The political media has, for the most part, only very recently awakened to a basic truth in this campaign -- Trump is not merely one GOP candidate among others, he is the de facto incumbent, running for another term. Candidates who run for non-consecutive presidential terms are almost unheard of, but Trump's never been one to follow political norms. Measured on the "merely one candidate" yardstick, Trump did amazingly well, quickly clearing the field of all primary challengers. But measured by the "incumbent" metric, he's really not doing that well at all. Imagine what the media would be saying if President Biden were losing votes (25, 35, or even 50 percent of them) to another Democrat in the primaries. They'd call him weak and be speculating whether he was going to drop out or not. That is the proper way to look at Trump's candidacy.

The other norm Trump is quite obviously ignoring is that when any candidate has a disaffected faction within their own party, they normally spend a lot of time and energy reaching out to these voters in an effort to woo them over. Trump, however, isn't a "wooing" kind of guy. He doubles down, again and again, on only exciting his base with his patented fear and loathing. He didn't even mention Haley's name in his Super Tuesday victory speech. And he's certainly not courting her voters in any discernable way.

In the first three states that voted (Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina), a whopping 68 percent of Haley voters said they would not support Donald Trump in November. That number may have been even higher among the Super Tuesday states. And another data point in the polling for Trump to worry about -- the sizeable number of GOP voters who say they won't vote for Trump if he is convicted of a crime before November. That's some awfully weak support within his own party, you've got to admit.

The Washington Post ran one of those "safari" stories today, where they go out and talk to "real Americans" in the Republican hinterlands. They ran quotes from a scattered assortment of Haley voters, indicating that different people are going to behave differently in November. The only numerical data they included (in terms of trying to figure out how many of each type there were) came at the beginning:

Recent polling from Quinnipiac University found that about half of Republicans and Republican-leaning voters who supported Haley would vote for Trump, while 37 percent would vote for Biden. Twelve percent said they would abstain, vote for someone else or hadn't yet decided what to do.

This isn't even close to the figure cited in a different Washington Post story today, which (as previously mentioned) put the figure at 68 percent of Haley voters refusing to vote for Trump (from a Fox News poll). Which number is closer to reality? Did the higher number include Democrats who voted for Haley (who, one assumes, would never vote for Trump)? More polling seems to be in order to better tease these numbers out.

Also, this polling predated Super Tuesday and it's anyone's guess how these people will feel come November (or how they feel now that Haley has dropped out, for that matter). Will they choose voting with their political tribe, even if they have major doubts about Trump? Or will they follow through on their (current) intention to vote for Biden, someone else, or just stay home? These numbers may shift, over time. Also, by November Donald Trump could indeed be a convicted felon, which would change the equation for a number of Republicans (some of whom weren't even Haley supporters). So it's a fluid sort of thing, but it will be an interesting one to watch (assuming the pollsters continue to track Haley supporters throughout the year).

One thing Super Tuesday did without a shadow of a doubt is kick off the general election campaign. Primary season 2024 is over. President Joe Biden will kick off his campaign tomorrow night with his State Of The Union speech, and while he will likely not even mention Trump's name (it is, after all, not supposed to be a political speech) he will lay out the contrast between a Biden second term and the alternative. Biden will almost assuredly reach out for disaffected Haley voters and try to win them over to his side. The success or failure of his effort to do so could decide the entire election. By November we may get an answer to what seems to me to be the most important question of the 2024 presidential campaign: whither go the Haley voters?

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant