Will it be Trump or Haley in NH? A former GOP chair and Lincoln Project founder weighs in

Jennifer Horn thinks Donald Trump will win in New Hampshire. But there's a chance he loses, and if he does, she said, he will sue.

With Chris Christie out of the presidential primary and Nikki Haley gaining ground on Trump in the polls, everyone wants to know what’s going to happen on New Hampshire primary night.

To get an idea, we turned to Horn, former New Hampshire Republican Party chair and co-founder of The Lincoln Project, a conservative group that aims to prevent the election of Trump.

Trump is probably going to win

“Trump is well positioned to win New Hampshire,” said Horn. “I personally think that will be incredibly destructive to us as a country.”

She thinks that the longer Trump is around, accepted by party leadership, and facing opponents too afraid to confront him, he will emerge victorious.

She acknowledges Haley is giving Trump a run for his money. It will be close on Election Day, but she thinks it’ll still go for Trump.

More: Haley is cutting Trump's lead in New Hampshire two weeks out from primary, new poll finds

If Trump loses NH, he will sue

Horn thinks the New Hampshire secretary of state should be on alert. If Trump loses, she expects election officials to hear from him within a day or two.

“If Nikki Haley defeats him in New Hampshire, he will accuse her and the Republican Party of cheating,” Horn said.

She envisions Trump blowing up the Republican National Committee with accusations of cheating and mounting legal challenges in every state he loses, as well as fighting any candidate that beats him. It would completely disrupt the primaries still to come.

“It’s part of what makes him so evil and makes him so destructive,” she said. “He will never acknowledge losing anything.”

Nikki Haley needs to win New Hampshire to have a shot at the nomination

Horn thinks New Hampshire’s primary is particularly consequential because it will decide whether Trump has any significant opposition going into the rest of the primaries.

If Haley doesn’t win New Hampshire, Horn said, “her ability to win the nomination is essentially dead.”

Haley has based her campaign on the argument that she is the only Republican who can beat President Joe Biden. But polls are showing it's unlikely for her to win the Iowa caucuses, and if she loses there, in New Hampshire, and in her home state of South Carolina, “she just can’t make that argument anymore,” said Horn.

Chris Christie dropping out doesn’t change anything

Many have speculated that Christie’s exit will help Haley. In the weeks before Christie suspended his campaign, calls for him to drop out accelerated as Haley backers believed he was splitting the anti-Trump vote away from Haley. Polls have showed Haley is many Christie supporters’ second choice.

But Horn doesn’t agree. “Nothing was said on that stage that I think will change the standings in Iowa or NH,” she said, referring to Wednesday's Republican debate in Iowa.

“No one should assume that Christie’s move hands the nomination to Haley,” she added in a tweet.

Haley’s strategy 'was a mistake'

Haley has faced some backlash for her lack of criticism of Trump, a strategy that all Republican candidates, except Christie, employed. The candidates didn’t want to alienate Trump voters, hoping they would be number two and could win over his voters if he imploded in the face of his legal challenges. But this strategy, Horn said, was dishonest.

“Nikki Haley agrees with Christie, 99% of what he says. She just won’t say that she does. She is literally trying to mislead the voters into believing that she thinks Trump is as strong as they think he is," Horn said. “But it’s not true. She knows that he’s dangerous to democracy. She knows that he’s crooked.

“Her strategy is inherently unethical and dishonest.”

Few Republicans are anti-Trump

“People who are genuinely anti-Trump are looking at Nikki Haley as their only hope,” said Horn. “However, I don’t believe in New Hampshire or frankly, anywhere else, that there is some extremely large base of anti-Trump Republican voters.”

While in 2020 there was a measurable percentage of Republicans who crossed over party lines to vote for Biden in the general election, Horn thinks this number has since decreased. The other non-Trump option for Republicans is Haley, who polls have shown catching up to Trump. But Horn isn’t encouraged by the numbers.

She believes even people who say they want to vote for Haley will likely vote for Trump when Election Day rolls around. “They want to vote for the guy they think is going to win.”

The count will take all night

On primary night Jan. 23 in New Hampshire, the heaviest Republican turnout will be along the southern tier of the state, where the party's population is the densest.

But, Horn said, you should also be watching the west and up north, where the population is sparser but there are enough people to push Trump over the line if he needs it.

“I would hold my tongue until pretty late at night,” Horn said. “You just don’t know unless it’s a blowout, and I don’t see it.”

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This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Will Trump or Haley win NH? Ex-GOP chair Jennifer Horn weighs in.