NEW YORK (AP) — Former Vice President Mike Pence on Saturday dropped his bid for the Republican presidential nomination, ending his campaign for the White House after struggling to raise money and gain traction in the polls.

“After much prayer and deliberation, I have decided to suspend my campaign for president effective today,” Pence said at the Republican Jewish Coalition gathering in Las Vegas. “We always knew this would be an uphill battle, but I have no regrets,” he said.

Pence becomes the first major candidate to leave a race that has been dominated by his former boss-turned-rival, Donald Trump.

The decision, more than two months before the Iowa caucuses that he had staked his campaign on, saves Pence from the embarrassment of failing to qualify for the third Republican primary debate, November 8 in Miami.

But the withdrawal is a huge blow for a politician who spent years biding his time as Trump’s most loyal lieutenant, only to be scapegoated during their final days in office when Trump became convinced that Pence somehow had the power to overturn the results of the 2020 election and keep both men in office — not something a vice president could do.

While Pence averted a constitutional crisis by rejecting the scheme, he drew Trump’s fury, as well as the wrath of many of Trump’s supporters who believed his lies and still see Pence as a traitor.

Among Trump critics, meanwhile, Pence was seen as an enabler who defended the former president at every turn and refused to criticise even Trump’s most indefensible actions time and again.

As a result, an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research from August found that the majority of US adults, 57 per cent, viewed Pence negatively, with only 28 per cent having a positive view.

Throughout his campaign, the former Indiana governor and congressman had insisted that while he was well-known by voters, he was not “known well” and set out to change that with an aggressive schedule that included numerous stops at diners and Pizza Ranch restaurants.

Pence had been betting on Iowa, a state with a large white Evangelical population that has a long history of elevating religious and socially conservative candidates such as former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and former Pennsylvania Rick Santorum.