What to watch for in New Hampshire, the second contest of 2024

Former president remains favoured but faces a closer rival in Nikki Haley

Republican candidates for president landed in New Hampshire last week after the bitterly cold Iowa caucuses ended in a landslide victory for Donald Trump early on Monday evening.

Mr Trump now only has one remaining rival in former UN ambassador Nikki Haley after Florida governor Ron DeSantis announced he was suspending his campaign on Sunday afternoon, some 36 hours before the New Hampshire primary, saying current polling suggested he had “no clear path to victory”.

That leaves the Granite State looking at a Trump-Haley showdown, with New Hampshire voting in a “semi-open” primary style that allows its sizable population of independent voters to participate in the respective major party primaries.

This is a second chance for Ms Haley to prove that the entire exercise isn’t just one long, drawn-out coronation. That was certainly the vibe in Iowa, where Mr Trump ran away with 51 per cent of the vote and the lion’s share of Republican delegates as his opponents battled to break 20 per cent.

There, Ms Haley, once thought to have surpassed Mr DeSantis’s support levels in the state, had to settle for third place. Vivek Ramaswamy, who had told The Independent that he would “prove the media wrong” and shock the country, dropped out after a distant fourth-place showing.

In New Hampshire, the fortunes of the Trump-alternative is reversed. Mr DeSantis was always considered non-competitive in the state, according to all available polling, which put him just above the number Mr Ramaswamy was registering before he departed the race.

Ms Haley, however, has been battling close to Mr Trump’s polling average; she still trails him, by single digits in a few polls and by larger margins in more. None show the likelihood of an Iowa-style blowout, however, which she hopes will invigorate her campaign as the primary landscape shifts south towards Nevada and South Carolina, the state where she served as governor.

Given the way the race is looking right now, we can reasonably expect another victory for Donald Trump in the Granite State. It’s not a certainty, especially now that Ms Haley is back on the ground there, but it remains the far most likely outcome.

That doesn’t mean the former UN ambassador and governor cannot pull a silver lining out of defeat — she could still find some momentum going forward with a second-place finish a few percentage points behind Mr Trump, but even that result will require Ms Haley to make great strides to win over undecideds and pick off voters from her rivals in just a short time.

Unlike Mr Trump, who is sticking to his strategy of holding occasional large rallies attended by thousands, Ms Haley is taking a traditionalist approach, barnstorming the state with multiple smaller events. There are consequences to this approach — it is more physically taxing, and costs can quickly add up on the road unless the candidate travels with a shoestring staff.

It can also be more effective, however, as word of mouth travels fast even when the candidate technically interacts with a relatively smaller number of voters.

A Suffolk University survey of the state released on Wednesday put Mr Trump up 16 points over Ms Haley, while Mr DeSantis was sitting at just 5 per cent. Her goal is now to get as close as possible to the former president.

Mr Trump, meanwhile, needs to continue driving up Ms Haley’s negatives as he seeks to maintain the coronation-esque trajectory of his campaign.

If you look at Washington, it’s clear that Mr Trump remains the only candidate with the wind at his back.

Following his Iowa blowout victory the man who remains charged with 91 felony counts, some related to his attempts to stop the peaceful transfer of power in 2020 and early 2021, picked up the endorsement of Senators Ted Cruz and Tim Scott; in doing so, he now has the official support of more than half of the Republican Senate caucus.

Unless something seriously changes soon, New Hampshire and the race itself are only going one way.