“May the best woman win!” exclaimed a doomed Nikki Haley on Monday as she barnstormed campaign stops in desperate last-minute maneuvers to challenge former U.S. president and runaway 2024 Republican presidential candidate Donald J. Trump in the New Hampshire primary. New Hampshire is an important state in American presidential politics. Following the less formal, folksier, and less reliably predictive Iowa caucuses, it hosts the first round of actual balloting for political parties’ presidential hopefuls. Candidates who lose in Iowa often turn around their fortunes in New Hampshire’s more straightforward voting and build momentum toward winning the nomination of their party to compete in the general election. In recent times, New Hampshire winners have almost invariably advanced to the nomination.
Unfortunately for Haley, who still enjoys the support of much of the Republican Party’s Washington establishment, a significant part of the right-leaning finance community, and a shrinking minority of Republicans who oppose Trump’s return, New Hampshire voters did not share her enthusiasm. The final polls released on the day of the state primary found Trump leading by double digits, and indeed, Trump trounced Haley by more than 11 points, a decisive lead, with an absolute majority of Republican votes tallying in his column.
The results were far from unexpected. With rare exception, most polls had predicted a crushing Trump victory in New Hampshire, with only one standout showing Haley losing by seven points. That outlying result raised fleeting hopes that supporters of former Republican candidate Chris Christie might combine with Haley’s supporters to come within striking distance of Trump’s lead, an eventuality that could have potentially created some momentum for her continuing campaign. All other polls reaffirmed Trump’s commanding lead, however, even with every single Christie supporter theoretically backing Haley.
In the last two weeks, Haley’s embarrassing third-place finish in Iowa dampened enthusiasm for her campaign. At the same time, the second- and fourth-place candidates there, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, dropped out of the race before the New Hampshire primary and enthusiastically endorsed Trump, as did former Republican candidate Tim Scott, a senator from Haley’s home state of South Carolina. By the day of the primary, there was simply no way that Haley would come anywhere remotely close to winning or even to staking out a respectable second place that she could build on later. Fox News and Newsmax, right-leaning American cable television networks, called the primary race for Trump within nine minutes of the polls closing, with the rest of the media following within a half hour.
As impressive as Trump’s victory in New Hampshire is, it is far more significant than the numbers might suggest. Unlike most states, New Hampshire allows independent, or so-called ‘undeclared’ voters, who have no party alignment, to vote in the primaries of the competing parties. Polling showed that Haley held a significant lead in that category, and many undeclared voters are thought to have balloted for her in the Republican primary, artificially increasing her standing against Trump. Additionally, members of opposing parties can easily ‘disaffiliate’ from their declared party to participate as de facto undeclared voters in primaries. Democrats out to block Trump’s return to power are thought to have done this in no small numbers, again boosting Haley far above her actual standing among New Hampshire Republicans. Even in the absence of such chicanery, New Hampshire is home to arguably the least conservative community of Republican voters among U.S. states, the type of Republicans most likely to support her over Trump. Significantly, the state’s Republican governor, Chris Sununu, actively campaigned for Haley. Yet, despite these advantages, she still finished disastrously short.
Don’t try telling Haley that her defeat was final, however. In her platitudinous concession speech, in which she admitted that Trump “earned” his victory and that she wanted “to congratulate him on that,” she nevertheless continued to lash out against the former president. As she had stated earlier in the day, she has no plans to drop out of the race, which she claimed was only just beginning despite Trump’s national lead of over 60%. She chided Trump for inviting “chaos” into American politics, for a campaign gaffe he made earlier in the day, and, she claimed, for being unlikely to defeat incumbent Democratic President Joe Biden, even though almost all polls show Trump handily defeating Biden in November in the now nearly certain event he should become the Republican nominee.
Haley is prepared to continue the fight in her home state of South Carolina, where a ‘super’ political action committee (PAC) supporting her campaign announced yesterday that it will spend millions of dollars advertising her candidacy. It is likely to be for naught. Current polling in South Carolina, where Haley is widely reviled and where many state politicians have, like Scott, already endorsed Trump, shows the former president leading by nearly 30 points in that state. Little Haley can say or do will change the results there or in other states. And as the Republican establishment may one day learn, high-value donations are simply not important or influential enough to reverse the opinions and preferences of the GOP base, the 80 to 85% of Republicans who hate their party’s elite leaders and distrust the wealthy donor class that remains somewhat, but not unshakably, aligned with them.
Like Haley, Trump hailed the evening as “a great night,” though he naturally had many more reasons to feel that way than she did. As the former president posted on his Truth Social network, “Haley said she had to WIN in New Hampshire. SHE DIDN’T!!!” Flanked by senior advisors, his son Eric, and his utterly obsequious former opponents Ramaswamy and Scott—both of whom praised Trump to the moon and predicted his triumph over both Haley and Biden—the victorious candidate exulted in his decisive win and predicted his speedy securing of the nomination and ultimate victory in November.
How long Haley will hold out is anyone’s guess, though it is unlikely that she will survive defeat in her home state, which has its primary on February 24, or prevail in the ‘Super Tuesday’ contest on March 5, in which 14 other states will hold their primaries. What is clear is that the longer she opposes Trump, the less the contest is about her than it is about the increasingly hopeless moderate Republican establishment confronting—and inevitably losing to—the American national conservative movement that has coalesced around Donald Trump for the past eight years. As Ramaswamy vividly put it in a short speech alongside Trump, America First has defeated America Last.
The Republican Race Is All but Over
Timothy A. Clary / AFP
“May the best woman win!” exclaimed a doomed Nikki Haley on Monday as she barnstormed campaign stops in desperate last-minute maneuvers to challenge former U.S. president and runaway 2024 Republican presidential candidate Donald J. Trump in the New Hampshire primary. New Hampshire is an important state in American presidential politics. Following the less formal, folksier, and less reliably predictive Iowa caucuses, it hosts the first round of actual balloting for political parties’ presidential hopefuls. Candidates who lose in Iowa often turn around their fortunes in New Hampshire’s more straightforward voting and build momentum toward winning the nomination of their party to compete in the general election. In recent times, New Hampshire winners have almost invariably advanced to the nomination.
Unfortunately for Haley, who still enjoys the support of much of the Republican Party’s Washington establishment, a significant part of the right-leaning finance community, and a shrinking minority of Republicans who oppose Trump’s return, New Hampshire voters did not share her enthusiasm. The final polls released on the day of the state primary found Trump leading by double digits, and indeed, Trump trounced Haley by more than 11 points, a decisive lead, with an absolute majority of Republican votes tallying in his column.
The results were far from unexpected. With rare exception, most polls had predicted a crushing Trump victory in New Hampshire, with only one standout showing Haley losing by seven points. That outlying result raised fleeting hopes that supporters of former Republican candidate Chris Christie might combine with Haley’s supporters to come within striking distance of Trump’s lead, an eventuality that could have potentially created some momentum for her continuing campaign. All other polls reaffirmed Trump’s commanding lead, however, even with every single Christie supporter theoretically backing Haley.
In the last two weeks, Haley’s embarrassing third-place finish in Iowa dampened enthusiasm for her campaign. At the same time, the second- and fourth-place candidates there, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, dropped out of the race before the New Hampshire primary and enthusiastically endorsed Trump, as did former Republican candidate Tim Scott, a senator from Haley’s home state of South Carolina. By the day of the primary, there was simply no way that Haley would come anywhere remotely close to winning or even to staking out a respectable second place that she could build on later. Fox News and Newsmax, right-leaning American cable television networks, called the primary race for Trump within nine minutes of the polls closing, with the rest of the media following within a half hour.
As impressive as Trump’s victory in New Hampshire is, it is far more significant than the numbers might suggest. Unlike most states, New Hampshire allows independent, or so-called ‘undeclared’ voters, who have no party alignment, to vote in the primaries of the competing parties. Polling showed that Haley held a significant lead in that category, and many undeclared voters are thought to have balloted for her in the Republican primary, artificially increasing her standing against Trump. Additionally, members of opposing parties can easily ‘disaffiliate’ from their declared party to participate as de facto undeclared voters in primaries. Democrats out to block Trump’s return to power are thought to have done this in no small numbers, again boosting Haley far above her actual standing among New Hampshire Republicans. Even in the absence of such chicanery, New Hampshire is home to arguably the least conservative community of Republican voters among U.S. states, the type of Republicans most likely to support her over Trump. Significantly, the state’s Republican governor, Chris Sununu, actively campaigned for Haley. Yet, despite these advantages, she still finished disastrously short.
Don’t try telling Haley that her defeat was final, however. In her platitudinous concession speech, in which she admitted that Trump “earned” his victory and that she wanted “to congratulate him on that,” she nevertheless continued to lash out against the former president. As she had stated earlier in the day, she has no plans to drop out of the race, which she claimed was only just beginning despite Trump’s national lead of over 60%. She chided Trump for inviting “chaos” into American politics, for a campaign gaffe he made earlier in the day, and, she claimed, for being unlikely to defeat incumbent Democratic President Joe Biden, even though almost all polls show Trump handily defeating Biden in November in the now nearly certain event he should become the Republican nominee.
Haley is prepared to continue the fight in her home state of South Carolina, where a ‘super’ political action committee (PAC) supporting her campaign announced yesterday that it will spend millions of dollars advertising her candidacy. It is likely to be for naught. Current polling in South Carolina, where Haley is widely reviled and where many state politicians have, like Scott, already endorsed Trump, shows the former president leading by nearly 30 points in that state. Little Haley can say or do will change the results there or in other states. And as the Republican establishment may one day learn, high-value donations are simply not important or influential enough to reverse the opinions and preferences of the GOP base, the 80 to 85% of Republicans who hate their party’s elite leaders and distrust the wealthy donor class that remains somewhat, but not unshakably, aligned with them.
Like Haley, Trump hailed the evening as “a great night,” though he naturally had many more reasons to feel that way than she did. As the former president posted on his Truth Social network, “Haley said she had to WIN in New Hampshire. SHE DIDN’T!!!” Flanked by senior advisors, his son Eric, and his utterly obsequious former opponents Ramaswamy and Scott—both of whom praised Trump to the moon and predicted his triumph over both Haley and Biden—the victorious candidate exulted in his decisive win and predicted his speedy securing of the nomination and ultimate victory in November.
How long Haley will hold out is anyone’s guess, though it is unlikely that she will survive defeat in her home state, which has its primary on February 24, or prevail in the ‘Super Tuesday’ contest on March 5, in which 14 other states will hold their primaries. What is clear is that the longer she opposes Trump, the less the contest is about her than it is about the increasingly hopeless moderate Republican establishment confronting—and inevitably losing to—the American national conservative movement that has coalesced around Donald Trump for the past eight years. As Ramaswamy vividly put it in a short speech alongside Trump, America First has defeated America Last.
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