Nikki Haley rejects Donald Trump's calls to quit the GOP race. Does she have a chance to beat him?

CONCORD, N.H. – A defiant Nikki Haley resisted calls to end her campaign and promised to keep fighting after suffering back-to-back losses to former President Donald Trump in her bid to capture the GOP nomination for president.

“This race is far from over,” Haley told her supporters Tuesday after Trump was declared winner of New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation primary.

Haley's vow to stay in the race came two days after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis quit his campaign and threw his support behind Trump – the latest in a long line of endorsements the former president has collected. In New Hampshire, Haley was trailing Trump 55%-44% with three-quarters of the vote counted. Her odds in her home state of South Carolina, where Trump is hugely popular, are even more daunting.

But Haley and her supporters insist there is still a pathway for her to capture the nomination. Polls show her defeating President Joe Biden in November – and performing much better against Biden than Trump. Her campaign argues she can pick off independent or uncommitted voters who are turned off by both Biden and Trump and are allowed to vote in open primaries in several states.

Turning her attention to South Carolina

For now, Haley is turning her attention to South Carolina, where she was twice elected governor and where she and Trump will face off in February. Looking further down the road, Haley pointed to the Super Tuesday primary in March, when voters in 16 states will make their pick for president.

Millions of voters will have their say in the next two months, Haley said in her concession speech, adding: “We should honor them and allow them to vote.”

Haley’s defeat in New Hampshire marked the second time in a week that she has lost to Trump. In Iowa’s caucuses last week, she placed third behind Trump and DeSantis.

Even before the results of New Hampshire primary starting pouring in, Haley’s campaign manager, Betsy Ankney, drafted a memo carrying a blunt message for those suggesting Haley should drop out of the race.

“We aren’t going anywhere,” Ankney said.

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Jabs at Biden, jabs at Trump

In her concession speech, Haley took jabs at both Biden and Trump. She faulted Biden "for making one bad decision after another – when he's making any decision at all." With Trump, she said, "you have one bout of chaos after another – this court case, that controversy, this tweet, that senior moment."

She also took a swipe at both men's age – Biden is 81, Trump 77 – saying "the first party to retire its 80-year-old candidate is going to be the party that wins this election."

Some Republicans say Trump's legal problems and the uncertainty they have cast over the race are part of why it may make sense for Haley to stay in the contest. Trump has been indicted on 91 criminal charges in four state and federal cases, including accusations that he tried to overturn the 2020 election, which he lost to Biden.

William F. B. O'Reilly, a Republican strategist from New York, said his advice to Haley, who was U.N. ambassador under Trump, would be to keep campaigning at least until the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee in July. The race won’t officially be over until then, when the party will award its delegates to the candidates.

“Ambassador Haley would be ill-advised to leave the race after New Hampshire, win or lose, with so much criminal litigation on the table for Trump,” he said. “A single conviction could change the entire trajectory of this race. Why would she ever give up last-alternative-candidate-standing status?"

Haley should repeatedly emphasize her better polling numbers against Biden as the Trump cases sort themselves out, O’Reilly said.

“It's a long way between now and the July convention in Milwaukee,” he said. “Haley, who's still well-funded, should be the resounding Plan B.”

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'Everyone should take a deep breath'

The three-page memo from Haley's campaign issued Tuesday listed several reasons for staying in the race, starting with the fact that polls show a majority of Americans want a choice other than Trump and Biden in November.

GOP candidates have historically relied on independents as part of their path to victory, including Trump in 2016, Ankney wrote. South Carolina has no party registration, and anyone can vote in the Republican primary as long as they haven’t already voted in the Democratic primary.

“South Carolina elected Nikki as Governor twice, against the odds,” Ankney wrote. “The people of South Carolina KNOW Nikki’s strong conservative record because they lived it.”

Because South Carolina is Haley’s home state, “Donald Trump is going to have a harder time falsely attacking me,” Haley told her supporters Tuesday night.

Even so, Haley could be in for a tough fight in the Palmetto State. A poll last week showed Trump beating her there by 40 points.

After South Carolina comes Michigan, which also has an open primary, followed by a closed primary in the District of Columbia and caucuses in Idaho and North Dakota. Then comes Super Tuesday, when 11 of the 16 states voting will have open or semi-open primaries. Of the 874 delegates available on Super Tuesday, roughly two thirds are in states with open or semi-open primaries, including Virginia, Texas, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina and Vermont.

“After Super Tuesday, we will have a very good picture of where this race stands,” Ankney’s memo said. “At that point, millions of Americans in 26 states and territories will have voted.”

“Until then,” she added, “everyone should take a deep breath. The campaign has not even begun in any of these states yet. No ads have been aired and candidates aren’t hustling on the ground. A month in politics is a lifetime.”

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'She's getting closer and closer'

New Hampshire voters argued Haley should stay in the race no matter the outcome of the results there.

“We can’t have Trump in office again,” said Janet Kelliher, a retiree who voted for Haley on Tuesday.

Kelliher said she doesn’t know if she would vote for Haley in the general election, but “there needs to be some kind of a choice come November,” she said.

Mary Donovan, a retiree, said she would have liked for Haley to have done better in New Hampshire but is glad she is staying in the race. “She works her butt off,” Donovan said. “She’s going to do everything she can.”

Allie Cable, of Concord, said she still plans to support Haley and has high hopes for her campaign despite the loss in New Hampshire. “Even though it was a loss tonight, I think she’s still going to have a lot of momentum,” she said.

Norine Calvano, a retired teacher from Manchester, said Haley should “absolutely” stay in the race. Calvano is a registered independent who voted for the former South Carolina governor. “I think she’s someone who’s going to bring things back to normal somewhat,” she said.

Suzi Zeising, an attorney from Atlanta, traveled to New Hampshire with her friend, Leah Aldridge, to volunteer for Haley’s campaign.

“I have never been this excited about a candidate,” Zeising said. “She really motivates me. I think she’s the best candidate for the job by far. I think most of America doesn’t really want to see a Trump-Biden rematch. Our only hope, I thought from the beginning, was for Nikki to be the Republican candidate to stop that from happening. And she’s getting closer and closer.”

Aldridge, who is also an attorney in Atlanta, believes Haley stands to benefit from DeSantis’ withdrawal from the race. “Trump only got 51% of the voters in Iowa, so there’s 49% in Iowa still out there,” she said. “Where will they go? I think a large percentage of them have decided Trump’s not their candidate and that they will stick with Nikki. This is the beginning of something really big.”

New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, who accompanied Haley on a visit to the polls in Hampton on Tuesday, said Haley has exceeded expectations.

“Six weeks ago, none of you predicted Nikki Haley was going to be the only candidate standing,” Sununu told reporters. “She has already exceeded expectations. She has already had a strong showing here. The sky is the limit. And to go into her home state with all of that momentum, that’s just an amazing opportunity.”

But Sarah Longwell, a GOP strategist and founder of the group Republican Voters Against Trump, said she doesn’t see a pathway to victory for Haley.

“The math is not there for her to win a Republican primary,” Longwell said. She added, “I don’t see a single state that she can win going forward.”

John Feehery, a partner at EFB Advocacy, a Washington D.C.-based boutique lobbying firm, said Haley should stay in the race if she believes she has a viable chance of winning. Theoretically, Haley should be in a strong position to compete given that that the race is a one-on-one contest, he said.

“My sense, though,” Feehery said, “is that Trump is in a much stronger position.”

That doesn’t mean she should drop out just yet, he said. “Haley might as well hang in there just in case something does happen to Trump, because you never know what can happen,” he said.

One possible strategy, Feehery said, would be to continue to collect delegates in states that don’t award all of their delegates to the winner and then see what happens at the convention.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Nikki Haley's odds vs. Trump in GOP primary are daunting. Can she win?