New Hampshire surprise: The GOP race against Trump looks much different than expected

After many months of lead-up, the Republican primary is no longer a matter of sheer speculation. It began with the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 15. A year ago, few people would have guessed that former President Donald Trump would have emerged from his post-midterm doldrums as the prohibitive front-runner. And insofar as anybody was going to pose a legitimate challenge to Trump’s hegemony, the easy money in January 2023 was on Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL). He was coming off a big win in Florida in the 2022 elections, had loads of cash, and had a sterling reputation with Republicans nationwide. 

Nobody would have bet that former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley would be the main anti-Trump candidate. But here we are: It is looking increasingly like the Republican primary, if it is going to be competitive at all, will be a Trump-Haley contest. 

For most of the summer, Haley seemed like a bit of an “also-ran” in the Republican contest, out of the conversation that seemed to be occurring between supporters of DeSantis and Trump. There was even a brief moment when Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) was rising in the Iowa polls, while Haley was stuck in the third tier with former Vice President Mike Pence.

That all changed in the late summer, thanks to the debates. Without Trump onstage, the debates have not meaningfully altered the overall trajectory of the race — it’s been Trump versus “everybody else.” But Haley’s competent performances, supplemented by aggressive campaigning and solid fundraising, propelled her to challenge DeSantis for the position of anti-Trump candidate.

And arguably more, for as DeSantis remained mired in a distant second in Iowa, Haley rocketed up the New Hampshire polls. She is positioned well within range of the former president in the Granite State, at least as of this writing, and at the same time, she clawed her way into a tie with DeSantis in the Iowa polls.

Through all of this, we see a clear Haley strategy. The goal was to finish a strong third or surprising second in Iowa, keep DeSantis from defeating Trump in the Hawkeye State, and then head into New Hampshire with a de facto two-person race. With the field consolidated, Haley would then vault ahead of Trump in New Hampshire, paving the way for the subsequent primary in South Carolina on Feb. 24. While Trump is strong in the Palmetto State, Haley was governor for six years, and she can rely on goodwill as a “favorite daughter.” With wins in New Hampshire and South Carolina, she would be well positioned to challenge Trump in Michigan on Feb. 27, then Missouri and Idaho on March 2, and finally Super Tuesday on March 5. 

That’s clearly the plan, at any rate. Can this work?

It is a low-probability bet, for sure, but then again, most candidates like Haley have only a low-probability shot at the White House. Sometimes, they pay off: for instance, Bill Clinton in 1992 and Barack Obama in 2008. And the allure of even the faintest prospect of success is enough to make the most ambitious politicians sacrifice 18 months of their lives to make it happen. 

And Haley’s strategy does have historical justifications behind it. It is not uncommon for Iowa and New Hampshire to issue split decisions. It happened in 1980, 1988, 2000, 2012, and 2016. In each of those cases, South Carolina resolved the dispute in favor of the ultimate victor. If Haley can win New Hampshire as Trump wins Iowa, the tiebreaker is her home state. That’s a smart angle.

Yet its weakness should be evident right from the start. This is merely a pattern, not a rule. The pattern holds because it reflects the underlying realities of the Republican electorate — not because the rest of the Republican electorate is duty-bound to follow suit. And so, while Haley could win South Carolina, it would be in large measure because she’s a favorite daughter rather than her better reflecting the mood of the party electorate. By any measure, Trump is still the one with the firm grasp on the party. Indeed, Haley’s rise is partially attributable to DeSantis’s collapse, which happened because DeSantis reckoned that he could position himself as a Trump-lite alternative to the former president, but the gambit largely failed. 

In fact, one reason Haley’s strategy makes sense is because the New Hampshire Republican primary often has a lot of non-Republicans participating in it. Dispositionally, the state skews independent, and polls indicate that these nonpartisan voters are partial to Haley. These voters are not going to be a driving force in most of the subsequent contests. In fact, the absence of a meaningful Democratic contest in New Hampshire means that a lot of people who conceive of themselves as Democrats will participate in the Republican primary just to cast a vote against Trump. That could propel Haley in the short term, but she cannot rely on such voters to win the GOP nomination. 

And Trump has quite a bit of history on his side, too. A year ago, it was not especially meaningful that Trump had a huge nationwide lead. Voters are not really plugged into the process so far away from the first contests, so name recognition counts for a lot. But so close to the actual election? No candidate in the modern era of primaries and caucuses with a lead as large as Trump’s has ever lost the nomination. 

And all of this assumes that Haley can actually win New Hampshire. Trump could very well beat her there. But she will face one fewer obstacle. Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie suspended his campaign before Iowa. He banked his entire candidacy on opposition to Trump and focused more or less exclusively on New Hampshire. He tended to poll in the double digits there and was even ahead of DeSantis in the state while remaining well behind both Haley and Trump. It stands to reason Christie voters will now migrate to Haley. However, Christie appeared to take shots at Haley and downplay her chances in a hot mic moment on his way out.

“She’s gonna get smoked, and you and I both know it. She’s not up to this,” Christie was heard saying, seemingly in reference to Haley, moments before pulling the plug on his own campaign.

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All in all, what are the odds Haley can pull this off? Shortly before the Iowa caucuses, the RealClearPolitics average of the various betting houses gives Trump a 74% chance of winning the nomination and Haley 15%, with DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy combining for most of the rest. That seems a bit too friendly to Haley. Assuming she wins New Hampshire, she is still going to need something to happen between the first in the nation primary and Super Tuesday to change the Republican electorate’s attitude toward Trump meaningfully. Could that happen? Absolutely. But her odds are probably no greater than 1-in-10. 

Of course, everybody would have said the same thing about Clinton, Obama, and even Trump at various points in their campaigns. And yet all three became president. It goes to show you never can tell. 

Jay Cost is Gerald R. Ford senior nonresident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.