Haley Needs Strong Showing in New Hampshire Today - Horowitz

Haley Needs Strong Showing in New Hampshire Today - Horowitz

Ron DeSantis’ dropping out of the race over the weekend and leaving Nikki Haley as the last Republican alternative to Donald Trump standing, raises the stakes even higher for her in today’s New Hampshire primary. Now, that it is down to the two-way race she has been aiming for since she announced her candidacy nearly a year ago, the former South Carolina governor will need a strong showing to put her in the best position to continue to raise the large sums of money that will be necessary to withstand the fierce attacks from Mr. Trump that are just about certain to accelerate in the month or so between tonight’s results and the next primary, which will take place on Saturday, February 24 on Ms. Haley’s home turf.

 

Strong showings in presidential primaries, of course, are especially in the early contests often more about how one does as compared to the expectations than the final vote totals and delegate counts themselves. In this case, Nikki Haley is advantaged by the fact that the average of recent polls in the state have her down by 15% points or more to Mr. Trump with the former president hovering around 50%.  If Ms. Haley can close the gap to single digits or thereabouts, she will exceed the expectations and likely garner favorable media coverage.  This is very possible, given that without political party cues to anchor and keep in place voters’ choices, candidate preferences in primary contests often move in large swings in relatively short periods of time. 

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Additionally, I would not dismiss out of hand the possibility that Ms. Haley emerges victorious tonight. While it is unlikely, these kinds of upsets do occur with some frequency in New Hampshire presidential primaries. A win tonight would give her candidacy the equivalent of rocket fuel, although even with that result, Donald Trump would still remain the solid frontrunner.

 

Ms. Haley is also fortunate that New Hampshire with its relatively fertile soil for her type of more moderate insurgent candidacy is the first test of the binary choice Republican primary voters now face.  In New Hampshire, independents are not only allowed to vote in the Republican primary; they have a history of turning out in large numbers, especially in years, such as this one, where there is not much in stake in the Democratic primary. A series of polls show Haley well-ahead of Trump in this sub-set of the likely New Hampshire primary electorate. If the share of independents that end up comprising today’s voters in the Republican primary bumps up, that bodes well for her.  Another advantage for Ms. Haley in New Hampshire as compared to most other states is the percentage of Republicans that identify as moderates ideologically is substantially higher.  Finally, she has the enthusiastic support of the Granite State’s popular Republican governor, Chris Sununu.

 

Going forward, Nikki Haley will need to sharpen the contrasts with the former president, going beyond the need for a new generation of leadership, which is her effective prime message, and more clearly and unapologetically telling Republican primary voters why she is far preferable to Mr. Trump. The case she has been making that she is a much stronger general election candidate than Donald Trump—which is backed up by polling and also self-evident to political professionals—is a good start. As long as Mr. Trump continues to be even or a bit ahead of President Biden in public polling, however, she needs to also make a substantive case, pointing to his manifest deficiencies as a leader.  

 

In this effort, she is likely to be helped by Mr. Trump himself who already is dipping into his racist play book by disgracefully playing with the longer Indian first name she does not use and falsely implying that even though she was born in the United States, as the child of Indian immigrants, she is somehow not eligible to run for president.  This may work with a subset of the voters that are already strongly committed to him, but it remains a turn-off for those soft Trump supporters Haley must attract, the ones who still have their fair share of doubts about him. If past is prologue, we can count on Donald Trump to up the racist rhetoric and the vicious personal attacks over the next few weeks.  This will be even more the case if Nikki Haley surpasses the expectations today.

 

Nikki Haley has run a smart, disciplined campaign, earning her status as the final contender to Donald Trump. But the biggest hurdle is still ahead of her: overtaking the former president who is well-liked by a good percentage of the Republican primary voters she must persuade. Results that exceed expectations tonight in New Hampshire will provide momentum for this uphill task.