Nikki Haley is reportedly receiving the coveted endorsement of New Hampshire governor Chris Sununu at a town-hall meeting in Manchester on the evening of December 12. Sununu is a very popular lame-duck governor who chose not to pursue opportunities to run for reelection, for the U.S. Senate, or for president in 2024. Instead, he’s set himself up as an anti-Trump kingmaker, giving the crucial nod to a contestant in his state’s first-in-the-nation Republican primary. That nod is going to Haley, who has recently been running a distant second in New Hampshire polls to the nationwide front-runner, Donald Trump.
That’s the good news this week for the former United Nations ambassador and governor of South Carolina. The not-so-good news was that she has lost her momentum in Iowa, according to the latest gold-standard Iowa Poll from Ann Selzer, and is still running third there behind Trump and Ron DeSantis. This sets up two possible paths ahead for the new Republican Establishment favorite, both of which lead to her home state’s primary on February 24.
The upbeat scenario that the Haley-friendly mainstream media (supplemented by the anti-Trump Republican media) will likely project is this:
- Haley edges DeSantis for second place after all in Iowa, ending his candidacy in the place he went for broke.
- Establishment Republicans push and pull Chris Christie, who is dividing the anti-Trump vote in New Hampshire, out of the race or otherwise marginalize him (he might not, for example, make the stage in pre-primary debates).
- Haley finishes a relatively strong second in New Hampshire, amid high hosannas from everyone in the country who loathes or fears the prospect of a second Trump administration.
- Haley slays the dragon in her home state, beating Trump and making it a competitive two-candidate race as she gathers still more money and hype.
She would, in that scenario, certainly have time to gather money and hype, given the unusually long hiatus between New Hampshire on January 23 and South Carolina on February 24 (there’s an intervening Nevada primary and caucus that everyone’s ignoring because the primary in which Haley is competing awards no delegates and the caucus is thought to be “rigged” for Trump). As Geoffrey Skelley notes at FiveThirtyEight, this could play into a Haley-led anti-Trump cabal:
The longer timeframe in 2024 could amplify many standard aspects of the early presidential primary season …
Long gaps will leave more time for the positive or negative media feedback loop to revolve, and for candidates to potentially gain or lose support based on a strong or weak early result, before a subsequent contest alters the campaign narrative. Deep-pocketed megadonors, outside groups and party leaders will have ample time to judge the state of the race and potentially switch their support. And a candidate on a downward trajectory could also have a harder time surviving financially over the longer gaps between contests.
In other words, even if Haley can’t squeeze DeSantis or Christie out of the race before New Hampshire, perhaps the money people and anti-Trump Republican elites can get the job done before South Carolina.
But there’s also a downward path ahead for Haley that seems more likely:
- Haley finishes a decent but not terribly strong third in Iowa (exactly where the Iowa poll puts her right now).
- Haley finishes second in New Hampshire, far behind Trump.
- Haley spends most of her time before South Carolina trying to get DeSantis and Christie (and even Vivek Ramaswamy, a minor irritant but one with some support) out of the race.
- Haley might then lose to Trump in her home state, effectively ending the GOP nomination fight well before Super Tuesday (March 5) or the projected start date for any of Trump’s criminal trials.
Currently, Trump is at 49 percent in the RealClearPolitics polling averages for South Carolina, nearly 30 points ahead of the Palmetto State’s former governor. Trump has been endorsed by the state’s governor (Haley’s successor, Henry McMaster) and by senior senator Lindsey Graham. Ending Haley’s candidacy there, much as he ended a challenge by Haley’s 2016 candidate Marco Rubio in his home state of Florida, seems quite plausible.
The underlying problem for Haley is that there’s nothing in her background and message that is appealing to Trump supporters, who represent a solid majority of Republican voters nationally (61 percent in the latest RCP polling averages) and a near majority in the early states where his rivals have concentrated their efforts. Her fans have been avidly promoting her electability credentials as evidenced by some (though not all) polls showing her running better against Joe Biden than any other Republican candidate. But electability is not presently the biggest worry of Trump backers, who are more focused on plotting vengeance on his and their tormenters when he wins. Unfortunately for Nikki Haley, her own backers are squarely in the MAGA crosshairs too. She needs a small miracle and a lot of luck to keep her campaign going through Super Tuesday.
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