There’s an actual political contest brewing in New Hampshire.
With just over a month left before Granite State voters go to the polls on Jan. 23, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley continues to close the gap between her campaign for the Republican nomination in the first-in-the-nation primary and that of her former boss, 45th President of the United States Donald Trump.
According to a Saint Anselm College survey, the former South Carolina governor is now just 14 points behind Trump in New Hampshire, coming in at 30% support to the ex-reality TV star’s 44%.
Healey’s climb comes after she received the much-sought-after endorsement of the state’s Republican Gov. Chris Sununu, who had been appearing at campaign stops across the state with several of the party’s top candidates before he finally settled on Haley as the best choice to beat Trump and take on President Joe Biden in the 2024 General Election.
“After earning the key endorsement of New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu, former Ambassador Nikki Haley has broken away from the pack pursuing former President Donald Trump and become the clear alternative. However, even after cutting Trump’s lead in half, she still trails as his support remains steady in the mid-40’s,” Neil Levesque, executive director at Saint Anselm’s New Hampshire Institute of Politics, said along with the poll’s release.
Haley’s numbers have been climbing steadily since she announced her campaign earlier this year. According to pollsters, she’s doubled her support there in just the last few months, gobbling up undecided voters and Republicans uncertain about the potential impacts of a second Trump term.
According to the poll of over 1,700 likely primary voters surveyed via cell phones on Dec. 18 and 19, support for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, once seen as the most likely challenger to Trump’s conservative dominance, has collapsed and fallen to just 6%. Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie continues to see “incremental” gains, according to pollsters, but comes in at just 12%.
Despite the Democratic Party’s decision to skip the New Hampshire primary this year and instead have South Carolina scheduled as the first partisan event, according to the poll President Joe Biden will likely win New Hampshire’s delegates via a write-in campaign. Even without Biden on the ballot, U.S. Rep. Dean Phillips, of Minnesota, polls at just 10% while author Marianne Williamson nets 7%, compared to Biden’s predicted 50%.
If both Trump and Biden win their party primaries, according to the poll, Biden will beat Trump in New Hampshire’s general election by 10 points, even if third party candidates are on the ballot.
“Biden enjoys a unified party, while the Republicans are fractured. In a hypothetical three-way contest between the incumbent, Trump, and independent Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., 92% of Democratic primary voters indicate they would vote for Biden in the general election, while only 62% of Republican primary voters indicate they would vote for Trump,” Levesque said.
On a national level, the numbers aren’t much different, though its notable that Trump does see a majority of support among Republicans polled nationwide.
A New York Times/Sienna poll also released this week shows Trump commanding 64% of the conservative vote, compared to Haley at 11%, DeSantis at 9%, and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy at 8%.
Those numbers remain in Trump’s favor despite his many legal complications.
The former president is the first person to hold that office and be indicted for a crime. He faces 91 felony charges across four federal and state jurisdictions, several of which deal with his alleged attempts to unlawfully and violently overturn the results of his last election.
A New York judge is currently weighing what sort of disgorgement will be required by Trump’s businesses after the courts found they’d misrepresented the value of the 45th President’s assets for years. Another New York judge has ruled it’s not inaccurate to say Trump “raped” author E. Jean Carrol, according to the common understanding of that word.
Voters don’t seem to mind all that much, according to Levesque.
“Trump’s supporters seem undeterred by the former president’s ongoing legal challenges,” he said.
