Can Nikki Haley win New Hampshire? (And Does It Matter?)
The Iowa caucuses are in the books and we are on the way to New Hampshire. Nikki Haley, fresh from a disappointing but not fatal third-place finish in Iowa, is pinning her hopes on the Granite State. Polling indicates that she has a chance. Can she pull it off? Does it really matter if she does?
It seems longer now, but it was barely more than a week ago that Chris Christie dropped out of the Republican primary. Since then, Vivek Ramaswamy and Asa Hutchinson have both ended their campaigns as well.
A week ago, the conventional wisdom was that Haley would be the primary beneficiary of Christie’s departure. This prediction was based on a smattering of second-choice polls, and it seems to have been borne out by two new polls of New Hampshire voters.
Over the past week, Suffolk/Boston Globe and St. Anselm College have both released post-Christie and post-Iowa polls. The two polls are very close in their results with the Boston Globe showing Trump leading Haley by 52-38 percent and St. Anselm by 50-36. Both polls show DeSantis at six points.
Yes, Nikki Haley has increased her polling share, but the rub is that Trump has done so as well. As the St. Anselm summary explains, Haley won the support of 60 percent of voters who changed their votes based on candidates ending their campaigns, but Trump won 51 percent of those who changed their votes based on the Iowa caucus results. The net result is that both candidates gained about seven points so, although Haley picked up support, she has not closed the gap with Trump.
Some interesting details from the Globe poll are that Haley voters are almost evenly split between whether their vote is a vote for Haley (45 percent) or against Donald Trump (48.3 percent). Ron DeSantis is still the top second-choice pick at 36 percent, while Haley (9.4 percent) and Trump (8.5 percent) are the least favorite second-choice options. The two frontrunners rank below “undecided” (21.1 percent) and “someone else” (14.9 percent) as a second choice.
There is hope for Haley even though 67 percent of voters in the Globe poll say they are “not at all likely” to change their vote at this point. That leaves about 13 percent who are likely to change their minds and in this game of inches, these voters could change the state of the race if they break for Haley.
Haley has enjoyed a long, slow climb in the polls since last summer while Trump has stayed relatively stable. He is currently enjoying a bump after Iowa, but if that bump proves temporary, Haley could quickly close the gap and make the race a tossup.
Based on what I’m seeing in the polls now, I predict another Trump victory in New Hampshire, but what if Haley can pull off an upset? I’m going to be blunt: Even if Haley survives New Hampshire, it doesn’t look good.
Haley is polling above average in New Hampshire while Trump is below average in the state. The Real Clear Politics national average has Trump at 62 percent and Haley at 11.8 percent, just ahead of DeSantis at 10.3.
By definition, if Haley is above average in New Hampshire then she must be below average in other places. The converse is also true. This means that Trump is going to be polling better in other states than he is in New Hampshire. That’s how averages work.
So, let’s look ahead at the Republican primary schedule, and examine how the polls look in the next few states. (Keep in mind that the Democratic primary schedule is different in some states.) The events are primaries unless otherwise noted and the number of delegates is in parentheses.
February 8
Nevada caucus (26) – There is only one recent poll. This Emerson poll has Trump at 73 percent in the party caucus. Haley opted not to caucus and instead entered the state’s primary while Trump and most other candidates are caucusing rather that competing in the primary. It’s a confusing situation, as CBS News explains, but Haley will not be eligible for delegates in Nevada.
Virgin Islands (4) – no polling
February 24
South Carolina (50) – There is only one recent poll in Nikki Haley’s home state. Trump leads there by 54-25 with DeSantis at seven percent.
February 27
Michigan (16) – Trump leads Haley 53-19 with DeSantis at nine. (Michigan also has a caucus on March 2.)
March 2
Idaho caucus (32) – no polling
Missouri caucus (54) – No polls since November when Trump led DeSantis 65-14.
March 3
District of Columbia (19) – no polling
March 4
North Dakota (29) – no polling
March 5 (Super Tuesday)
Alabama (50) – No polling since November when Trump led by 50.
Alaska (29) – no polling
Arkansas (40) – No polling since September when Trump led by 29.
California (169) – An early January poll had Trump over Haley 66-11 with DeSantis at eight.
Colorado (37) – no polling
Maine (20) – Trump led DeSantis by 26 points last spring.
Massachusetts (40) – No polls since November when Trump led Haley 55-18.
Minnesota (39) – No polls since November when Trump led DeSantis 60-17.
North Carolina (74) – A January poll showed Trump leading Haley 66-12.
Oklahoma (43) – No polling since November when Trump led DeSantis 69-12.
Tennessee (58) – December polling showed Trump with 70 percent.
Texas (161) – Trump led DeSantis 65-12 in December.
Utah caucus (40) – An October poll showed Trump with 30 percent and Desantis and Haley in a statistical tie at 14 and 13. This is about as good as it gets for Haley after New Hampshire.
Vermont (17) – January polling showed Trump over Haley 47-19.
Virginia (48) – No polling since November when Trump was up by 49 points.
American Samoa (9) – no polling
I could go on, but I don’t think there is any point. (You can look ahead to the rest of the primary schedule here.) Over the whole country, there are wide gaps in the polling, but where there is data, Trump holds leads that are probably insurmountable.
Nikki Haley has bet the farm on New Hampshire. If she can eke out a win there, she may be able to fund more ads in upcoming states. At the same time, DeSantis’s campaign seems to be cratering. If the Florida governor drops out and Haley can woo his voters (a big if since polling indicated that Trump was the second choice of most DeSantis voters), the combination of advertising blitzes paired with a winner’s bump from the New Hampshire primary and another bump from DeSantis dropping out may be enough to make Haley competitive in the next rounds of primaries.
Another possibility is that independents could crossover in New Hampshire’s primary to vote for Haley. John McCain won the 2000 primary this way, but he couldn’t build support in later states. McCain’s New Hampshire win became a “dead cat bounce.”
I think you can see how unlikely these scenarios are. It would require a perfect storm of political timing and even then it might not be enough to overcome Trump’s lead.
A more likely scenario is that DeSantis drops out after a disappointing showing in New Hampshire and his voters help to solidify Trump’s lead. Haley fizzles in South Carolina and limps along until Super Tuesday. When Trump sweeps the Republican contests that day, she drops out and endorses Trump.
At this point, even if Haley wins in New Hampshire, Donald Trump is almost certain to be the Republican nominee. The Former Guy built up an insurmountable lead over the past four years as Republican leaders failed to hold him accountable or offer anything more than mild criticism to his excesses and outlandish – even criminal – behavior.
As Jeremiah Wright said, “Those chickens are coming home to roost.”
Donald Trump is now the Republican establishment. He controls the party at this point, and there is no use pretending otherwise.
If we’ve learned anything this cycle, it’s that you can’t win a primary by ignoring your opponent’s numerous serious flaws and hoping that he goes away. Both Haley and DeSantis treated (and are treating) Trump with kid gloves, when the only way to beat him was to attack his fitness for office directly. That would have been a risky strategy in the current Republican Party, however, and the “fighter” didn’t make it any easier when he refused to debate his opponents.
When the primary is over, after the convention is done, my Republican friends will come around and tell me, “You have to vote Trump because it’s a binary choice and we have to defeat Biden.”
My answer is going to be, “It wasn’t a binary choice in January or February. You had other good candidates that I would have considered. You could have had a conservative who would champion conservative policy. You could have had a less obnoxious and dangerous candidate, but you picked Trump because you wanted him. You’ve made your bed now lie in it.”
I know its hard to swallow, but your “Friends” no longer see the world as you do. Much like GOP politicians no longer do either.
Trump will be the nominee of the GOP, and even if he is convicted of something by then, he won’t be in jail. Once again Democrats and Independents will be pressed to save the GOP from itself. We are getting really tired of doing so.Report
Yes. Just do the decent thing and vote for Democrats until Republicans become sane again. Here’s your Keffiyeh. We’re going to be protesting at the cancer hospital later.Report
Continuing to vote down ballot for the GOP won’t cure the rot that allowed Trump to rise. He remains a symptom, not the disease. And Democrats really shouldn’t be expected to save the nation from the GOP’s ills time and time again.Report
I absolutely believe that Democrats shouldn’t be expected to save the nation.
Here are your new plagiarism guidelines for higher education. They’ve been updated to be less discriminatory against low performers.Report
Man, if your big argument for voting Trump is “Palestinian protesters” and “Harvard perfessor I’m feeling really good about November.Report
See, you think I’m arguing for voting for Trump.
That assumption takes you to wrong conclusions.
I’m not arguing for voting for Trump.
I’m pointing out more of the rot that allowed Trump to rise.
And why Democrats really shouldn’t be expected to save the nation from the GOP’s ills.Report
Were you intending to give us the dictionary illustration of reactionary authoritarianism?
Because if you look it up, your statement is right there as an example.Report
Wait until you read the next chapter.Report
Jay, I don’t personally subscribe to the opinion that you’re trolling or that you’re a closet conservative- I know you reluctantly support the Dems so I hope you won’t feel this is piling on but I’d like to request that you show your math here.
The two examples you have brought up are Palestinian supporting protesters and those people who say the Harvard President was wrongfully sacked. I find this striking because both of these groups are pretty much completely disconnected from the Democratic party as a functional matter. Moreover the former group, emphatically, and the latter group, mostly, subscribes to principles (Hamas apologetic support for Palestinians and DEI respectively) which sets them not just apart from but opposed to this Democratic Administration. Bidens actual, literal, policies are the -inverse- of what the former group agitates for and are generally detatched from and unsupportive of what the latter group advocates for.
This strikes me as odd because both of these groups could, emphatically in the former case and likely in the latter case, be expected to be unsupportive of President Biden and to not wish for him to be re-elected. Yet you appear to suggest that their behavior reflects (negatively) on both the overwhelming majority of liberals (whom neither of these groups represent) and the liberal political party in this country (which has little to any direct connection or support for these groups or causes).
I understand this is propaganda that the right-wing media apparatus consciously and strategically deploys. I also think this is stupid pap that a lot of main stream media indulges in because it caters to their defensive crouch and BSDI predilections.
But you’re not a right wind media apparatchik – indeed you’ve been banned from Red State. Nor are you a main stream media employee nor one of their shills.
So, I am curious if you can expand on your premise here. Would promulgating and repeating these themes not play into the interests of groups and causes you don’t support- both on the right and extreme left? Would this not also strengthen both the degraded right and the fringe but extreme left? Doesn’t this encourage both the lefty fringers to indulge in their fringe thinking more and lend aid and comfort both to right wing propaganda and centrist media laziness?
Or am I misreading you?Report
Well, for what it’s worth, I think that there is a bit more… oh, I don’t know what the term would be… “affection”, maybe, between “the Democrats” and “the left” and “the progressives”. Yes, honest-to-goodness Democrats looked at the Claudine Gay thing and made a face and said “this is a textbook definition of plagiarism”. It was the progressives who started creating interesting defenses out of whole cloth, started pointing out that everybody does it, and pointing out that the people who pointed it out were *BAD*.
And there is some serious tension between the principled folks who know that students regularly get busted for quoting without attribution and those who know that CHRIS FREAKING RUFO IS INVOLVED WITH THIS.
I mean, we *KNOW* that it’s a textbook case of plagiarism. It’s embarrassing.
That said, how easy would it be to say “you know what? As plagiarism goes, this isn’t that bad but, as human beings go, it doesn’t get worse than Rufo” and start defending Gay against these unfounded attacks?
It’s that siren’s call that I know is being heard that is funny.
The Israel/Palestine thing? It’s similar. Hey, I understand thinking that Israel is over-reacting to a handful of hippies getting shot. “Yes, October 7th was an atrocity. BUT! It’s very important to have a proportional response and Israel’s response passed “proportionate” in November and continued into December and now it’s January and nobody is talking about a ceasefire!” Sure, I could see how someone in good faith could hold that view.
But that’s not the fashionable one, is it? The fashionable one is the one where folks are marching and denouncing others as being “complicit”. Starbucks! Pizza Hut! Burger King!
And these guys flew a little too close to the sun. I’ve had two people write me asking me to remove their names from a post talking about the whole Israel/Palestine thing.
I digress. The tension between the “fun” position of saying “genocide” and “colonialism” and the official Biden position of “we support Israel (but will try to talk them down behind the scenes)” is doing a good job of not making a whole lot of people happy but also explicitly making the FASHIONABLE people downright infuriated.
How easy would it be to just start calling for a ceasefire and a 2-state solution?
It’s that siren’s call that I enjoy poking.
The tension between the official position and the fashionable one.
So… it’s a wry pointing out of the contradictions going on and, yes, how funny they are. And to the extent that we here are a little petri dish of the future, it’s important to see what parts of the agar hear the song.
When Trump became president last time, there was a detente, of sorts.
The uncertainty about the upcoming election is causing for there to be a lot of pre-new-detente negotiation. And it’s fun to poke and what I think will be some of the areas of contention in the upcoming months.
But I say that assuming that Biden is vulnerable and Trump has a better shot in 2024 than he did when there was a pandemic and something vaguely lockdown-adjacent going on.Report
Ok I’m more confused now than I was before. You seem to be acknowledging that the Pro-Claudine Gay people and the Pro-hamas/Palestinian people are separate and not represented by Biden and his administration. But you also seem to be suggesting that there’s a detente between them? Or one is growing? But if anything the gap between the Palestinian advocates and Biden is growing whereas the Claudine Gay thing is vanishing (quick bleg, did any administration officials go to the mat for Claudine Gay at all? Can I get some examples?).
So, again, how is it that the antics of the Claudine Gay crowd or the Pro-Palestinian crown should reflect on the Democrats when they’re separate groups and, indeed, rather opposed to each other?Report
The Pro-Claudine Gay people and the Pro-Palestians/Hamas factions have no overlap with The Establishment Democrats.
But, during Trump’s presidency, all of that was put on the back burner. There was a detente. Among other things, it resulted in Biden.
Now things are warming up again. It’s important to pre-negotiate the terms of the coming negotiation for the potential detente 2.0.
I don’t think that any administration officials went anywhere near the mat for Claudine Gay. Heck, it wouldn’t surprise me if one or two said “WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT” after the disastrous congressional hearing.
But as we get closer to November, it’ll become more and more important to husband one’s ammo. Are you really going to suggest shooting someone on your own side over shooting someone on the other side?
The reflection on the Democrats is due to the last detente and the assumption that there’s going to be a new one if Trump proves dangerous.Report
I doubt BIden will shoot at his fringers. One of the top ten rules of politics if there’s normally no return in battling with your own wingnuts. But I doubt Biden or his people will do anything except what they have done which is generally ignore their fringe.
And I hate that whatabout but the GOP’s fringe has literally taken over their party whereas Biden keeps his fringe at arms length so I feel that it doesn’t reflect much on the Dems at all, except in a favorable light.Report
Here’s something that might be spooky: The establishment Republicans were the fringe. The populists have always been the main body. It’s just that Reagan did a good job of bringing the populists in and keeping them there for a bit. Dumbya and 9/11 did the same.
And now the establishment players are trying to get “their” party back from the populists and…
Well, there are more populists who are more passionate.
You know the whole “what have ‘conservatives’ conserved?” question that pops up from time to time?
Well, enough populists have asked that question enough times to enough people that the party’s control got wrested away from the people who thought that it was Jeb’s turn.
And now the megadonors will be struck with a choice: Go with the populists and try to strike a deal with them *OR* switch over to the Democrats. Hey, Biden could always use a few more donations, right?Report
I agree with that analysis, yes. The republitarian elite has always been the braintrust/money men of the party but never the voters. They outsourced the voting work to the cultural conservatives.
But they’re stuck now. The Dems aren’t and can’t be the “Tax cuts, no matter what, tax cuts” party they want. Moreover, they haven’t lost the GOP yet- what was the only major thing Trump accomplished legislatively? Yeah, tax cuts.Report
A lot of GOP base voters in the last 5-6 years have frankly said they are in the Trump camp because the GOP elites ignored them.Report
Yes, Trump is gangrene. An opportunistic bacteria that colonized and flourished in the gaping wound that is the gap between the right wing elite and their voters.Report
Trump is a symptom, not a causeReport
Just so.Report
I think that’s more folklore than anything. Bush II was largely a conservative, and Dole and McCain were long-serving but charted their own paths. Jeb would have lost to at least Rubio and Cruz.
ETA: At least half the anger toward the “establishment” was for not fighting hard enough, rather than what they stood for.Report
I think the people accusing Biden or aiding and abetting in Genocide almost certainly did not vote Democratic in 2020 or possibly ever. This group are the leftier than thou contingent that thinks the Democratic Party is the true roadblock to their imagined socialist utopia where everyone gets 600k a year, free housing and world class healthcare, and no day job.
I do think there are probably a fair number of Democrats who think the attack on Claudine Gray were a right-wing attack job but I don’t think this group is going to abandon the Democrats for it. If anything, it will make them more committed to voting Democratic.Report
Biden seems to be on the right side of public opinion and probably also the donor class with his decision making on the subject so far. Absent the US getting sucked into a regional conflict over tbe next 10 months I’d be shocked if Israel is in any way consequential to the election.Report
It’s a no win situation. Biden can’t move harder on the Israeli’s (even though Bibi richly deserves it) because of how well connected the Israeli’s are and how popular their cause is. But Israel is going down a really really bad path with Gaza and the West Bank and they really need something/someone to yank them back.Report
“And Democrats really shouldn’t be expected to save the nation from the GOP’s ills time and time again.”
I disagree. Emphatically and profoundly. In fact I would go so far as to say that saving the nation from the GOP is very much one of the raison d’etre’s of the modern Democratic Party. If we cannot expect the Democratic Party to prevent the GOP from doing bad stuff as one of its core functions then I think a person could very rationally ask what the use of the Democratic Party is. I’d personally say the Dems have two purposes: To prevent the GOP from doing bad stuff and to do good stuff themselves. In these current times I’d even go so far as to assert that the former purpose is the more important one because the GOP is so very bad right now.Report
Hey, you know what? I think I agree with this.
But I think that part of the problem is that the Democrats also haven’t been doing a particularly good job for a while. Since the 90’s, maybe. (The *MID* 90’s.)
There is a major disconnect between the Establishment Players and The American People. Trump is a symptom of this.
Getting rid of Trump won’t get rid of the problem. Hell, it might make it worse, depending on how Trump is gotten rid of.Report
I don’t agree with your analysis of the Dems performance (of course I wouldn’t, I’m an unabashed partisan). If we look at the Dems performance from 2000 on they’ve held the presidency a solid 50% of the time. Moreover over that same period of time the Dems have both held their own politically AND advanced many of their own causes significantly through legislation. Contrast this with the GOP which, to be fair, has held their own politically but have only advanced their own legislative causes if you define their causes as “tax cuts and nothing else” Moreover they’ve lost their fishin principles, their minds and one of their 8 year terms in office (Bush W) was one of the most destructive periods for American interests in modern history.
I mean, if you compare the two the Dems have done pretty well.Report
My definition of a “good job” is from the point of view of the hypothetical “American People”. It’s about more than winning elections. It’s about, among other things, jobs jobs jobs, education education education, and cheap energy.
If folks have trouble with any of those, it’ll be the fault of The Government (fair or unfair, it will be). Jobs are a coin-flip (WHEN IN THE HECK WILL THE BOOMERS RETIRE?!?), education has ups and downs and we’ve gone over the whole lower education issue ad nauseum and the higher education problem is pretty much encapsulated with journalists being among the groups most likely to have college debt that they still can’t pay off, and cheap energy? Well, that’s always a problem, isn’t it?
We’re going to see how the summer goes, of course.
Hey, now that you bring it up, we should have a prediction thread this week…Report
Biden has overseen 22 straight months of job growth, real wage growth of around 5%, continued record low unemployment, and declining rates of inflation.
Seems to me he should be a shoe in if the hypothetical Americans you mention are actually paying attention.Report
Yeah, I imagine that if the hypothetical Americans I mention are actually paying attention, Biden’s approvals should be really high.Report
IF and only IF that “Keeping the GOP from doing bad stuff” came with some sort of actual accountability, I MIGHT let it slide. IF and only IF the conservatives around here could see their way to owning the fact that they support an anti-freedom and liberty party. I MIGHT be persuaded. IF and only IF The GOP were honest about what it is trying to do to America I MIGHT give you point merit.
But we live in a time of asymetric political war, carried out by stochastic terrorism and the complete willingness to trash democracy for the preservation of power. The GOP has spent 4 decades placing us in this peril on purpose. And we Democrats are – again – expected to save them from themselves.
Its insulting. But sure, let the GOP off the hook again f it helps you sleep better.Report
No, keeping the GOP from doing bad stuff doesn’t come with “accountability”. For example: the GOP wants to privatize social security. The Dems responsibility is to prevent the GOP from doing such a thing. The only accountability the GOP owes is to the electorate and it is the voters who’d be responsible for imposing accountability.
If you’re talking about outright criminal stuff then there, too, the Dems are NOT responsible for imposing “accountability” on the GOP. Their responsibility is to appoint a competent Attorney General and then leave him or her alone to prosecute impartial justice as per statute via the normal operation of the Department of Justice. Accountability comes from the AG, the relevant DA’s and, ultimately, the jurors.It is not and should not be a political, Democratic Party, responsibility and I think the Dems and Biden have played their part very well.Report
Looking at the advanced polling, I’d say this Trump fellow has a pretty decent shot at the Republican nomination.Report
“You have to vote Trump because it’s a binary choice and we have to defeat Biden.”
David’s right, we are going to be hearing this a lot by embarrassed Republicans who want some excuse to vote for Trump.
The thing is, they can’t follow that up with any sort of reasoning that isn’t just a mishmash like “Palestinian protesters” or “Husky men in girl’s locker rooms” or just “DEI argle bargle gibber squee”.
No one can seriously refute the fact that Trump will destroy democracy and the rule of law.
So any excuses are really just going to be a reveal of preferences, that someone would rather destroy democracy than allowing other people to live in ways they find objectionable.Report
The counter-argument seems to be “You have to vote Biden because it’s a binary choice and we have to defeat Trump.”
Let’s hope it’s more persuasive.
This is from the NYT Business section: A Consensus Emerges at Davos: Trump Will Win Re-Election.Report
Plutocrats work the refs to get fewer regulations and more tax cuts.Report
Also they got it wrong in 2016 and 2020 so troll failReport
They got it so wrong in 2016, they had to eat a bug.Report
Why should I think you are anything but a troll with comments like this? The thing about you is that you are too cowardly to admit sympathy for Trump voters so you hide behind stuff like this because you think it looks like a more legitimate way to troll liberals.Report
Saul, let me say this explicitly: Think whatever you want.
The only thing that I am asking of you is to be honest with yourself when it comes to what you see with your own eyes.
And when you are asked to choose between what you see with your own eyes, with what I am saying in comments, and with what is fashionable to admit that you think… well, I’d only ask you to pick the two that agree.
That’s it.Report
And when Saul’s honest reporting of what he see’s with his own eyes, regardless of how it aligns with fashion – much less your comments – then what?Report
Then that’s all I could possibly ask for.Report
1. Probably not.
2. No.Report