‘She has to come within single digits’: Haley allies curb New Hampshire expectations
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A group working to turnout undeclared voters for Nikki Haley in the New Hampshire primary said the former South Carolina governor needs to come within single digits of Donald Trump on Tuesday in order to prolong the 2024 Republican nominating contest.
“She has to come within single digits,” said Robert Schwartz, the co-founder of Primary Pivot, an organization urging atypical voters to participate in the GOP primary to oppose Trump.
“A double-digit victory and the narrative is Trump is the nominee.”
What’s more: A double-digit loss for Haley could quickly dry up outside resources for her candidacy, even if she chooses to plod on.
“There’s a good chance this whole effort ends Wednesday,” conceded Schwartz. “I hope it doesn’t … but I’m bracing myself for it.”
Primary Pivot is targeting 150,000 nonpartisan New Hampshirites – who are highly educated or left-of-center politically – to infiltrate the GOP primary on behalf of Haley. It has also attempted to persuade 3,500 New Hampshire Democrats to cross over, using the threat of a second Trump term as their chief motivator.
The goal: To surge the total number of New Hampshire GOP primary voters to 300,000 or more – easily surpassing 2016’s primary turnout –with at least 44% undeclared voters powering Haley’s support.
But even in that scenario, Schwartz projected Haley would still probably fall short of toppling the former president, who scored a nearly 20-point victory in New Hampshire in 2016 when 284,000 ballots were cast.
It’s an acknowledgment of the tantamount task of defeating Trump even on favorable turf, in which nonpartisan voters play a significant role. And it’s part of a broader endeavor of Haley allies to tamp down expectations in the final days before an outcome that could seal the former U.N. ambassador’s fate.
“The expectation was we want a strong second place. We’ve got that,” said New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, campaigning alongside Haley on Thursday, after previously calling the state “an absolute win” for her.
Speaking after Sununu, Haley added: “We wanted to be strong in Iowa, we did that. We want to be stronger in New Hampshire, we’re going to do that. We want to go to my sweet state of South Carolina, be even stronger there.”
But in order to make a real run at Trump’s lead in February’s South Carolina primary, many political operatives believe that Haley’s New Hampshire margin matters.
“Nikki peaked about three weeks too soon to have a chance of pulling off the upset and beating Trump,” said Kevin Smith, a New Hampshire Republican who ran for U.S. Senate. “Things were going well for her until the slavery gaffe – and she’s had a few other missteps since then. I think most people believe Trump will win here, the question is still by how much.”
The latest Boston Globe/Suffolk University tracking poll released Friday conveyed a race that wasn’t close. It had Trump holding 52% to Haley’s 35%, a 16-point advantage that, if realized, would severely diminish Haley’s case that she’s a true threat for the nomination.
The numbers largely concur with what the Trump campaign is seeing in its private polling, according to a Trump aide.
“If Donald Trump wins with 50% of the vote in New Hampshire … it’s over, it’s done,” said Republican pollster Frank Luntz on the Wall Street Journal Opinion podcast.
TEXTING AND MAILING A TOUGH SELL
PrimaryPivot has spent about a half million dollars on mailers and text messages to undeclared New Hampshirites. After extensive testing, they’ve found it’s important to stress Haley’s name and that urging a vote against Trump doesn’t fully convince people to participate, according to Schwartz. Secondly, they stress that Haley is viable to assure potential voters they aren’t wasting their time.
Finally, they utilize a comparison chart contrasting Haley and Trump’s reactions to tragedies like the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol and the 2017 white supremacy rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Schwartz acknowledges that his group has met resistance from skeptics who categorize Haley as “just as bad as Trump” and an “enabler” who is “going to pardon him.” He pushes back that Haley is different in that she believes in democracy and respects the Constitution.
Still, she’s likely to carry the undeclared vote. The latest Boston Globe/Suffolk University survey shows her tracking ahead of Trump among undeclared New Hampshire voters 49% to 38%. Haley’s problem is she’s capturing only 25% of registered Republicans against Trump’s 62%.
No candidate has ever won the New Hampshire primary without winning a majority of their party’s registered voters, according to Andrew Smith, the director of the University of New Hampshire’s Survey Center.
Schwartz said Primary Pivot had hired staff in South Carolina, which holds an open primary on Feb. 24, but he’s admittedly skeptical given its more conservative bent and allegiance to Trump.
In 2016, after Trump took New Hampshire by nearly 20 points, he won South Carolina by 10.
