Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley has played the 2024 Republican primary expectations game as she has played her opponents.
But any momentum she and her campaign can spin out of New Hampshire may be punctured by the practical reality of former President Donald Trump’s political influence and machine in Nevada and South Carolina, her home state.
Despite coming second in New Hampshire’s two-person race, potentially by double digits, Haley projected her campaign forward to South Carolina’s Feb. 24 primary, one month and a lot of money away, by repeating that her aim for the Granite State was simply to be “stronger” than Iowa. In the Hawkeye State, she was third after Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL)’s 51% and 21% of the vote, respectively, with 19% support.
In New Hampshire, with 95% of the vote counted, Trump led with 54% to Haley’s 43%.
During her election night watch party remarks, Haley encouraged the Republican Party to “retire” Trump, underscoring how she “got close to half of the vote” in New Hampshire after previously downplaying the former president’s record-breaking win in Iowa by pointing to the Hawkeye State’s low turnout. No nonincumbent Republican presidential candidate has succeeded in Iowa and New Hampshire and then proceeded to lose the nomination.
“I want to congratulate Donald Trump on his victory tonight,” Haley said Tuesday in Concord. “New Hampshire is first in the nation. It is not the last in the nation. This race is far from over. There are dozens of states left to go, and the next one is my sweet state of South Carolina.”
Trump responded shortly afterward during his counterpart event in Nashua, apparently upset with his closer margin of victory compared to Iowa and with Haley for not suspending her campaign. There had been concerns before the primary’s opening nominating contest last week in the Hawkeye State that New Hampshire would be an even more competitive race, the former president’s campaign and super PAC spending millions of dollars to undermine her on immigration and entitlement reform.
“Who the hell was the impostor that went up onstage and claimed a victory? She failed badly,” Trump said. “Let’s not have somebody take a victory when she had a very bad night.”
“You can’t let people get away with bulls***,” he added. “And when I watched her in the fancy dress ― that probably wasn’t so fancy ― come up, I said, ‘What’s she doing? We won.’ She did the same thing last week.”
Prior to Iowa, DeSantis’s campaign similarly criticized Haley for her expectations game and tried to raise the political stakes for her. His aides particularly complained after Gov. Chris Sununu (R-NH), a critical endorsement, reiterated how she could come second in the Hawkeye State and win New Hampshire.
“After spending weeks claiming Haley would beat Trump in New Hampshire, Chris Sununu last night attempted what ABC’s Rick Klein called a ‘serious downgrade of Haley expectations,’” former DeSantis campaign communications director Andrew Romeo said. “Not to mention the fact that the chief strategist of her super PAC also said Haley ‘has a great chance to win New Hampshire.’”
As votes continued to be counted, Haley’s campaign emphasized how “pollsters and pundits predicted a 20-point loss” for her in New Hampshire. Her staff argued that “the narrow result speaks volumes about Trump’s weakness going forward and Haley’s surprising strength.”
“The political elites never learn,” Haley’s own communications director Nachama Soloveichik said. “The same naysayers who said Nikki Haley couldn’t defeat a 30-year incumbent state legislator or win the governor’s race in South Carolina are the same people declaring the presidential race over after only two states have voted.”
“Roughly 50 percent of Republican primary voters want an alternative to Donald Trump,” Haley campaign manager Betsy Ankney wrote earlier Tuesday in a memo. “Seventy-five percent of the country wants an option other than Donald Trump and Joe Biden. We’ve heard multiple members of the press say New Hampshire is ‘the best it’s going to get’ for Nikki due to independents and unaffiliated voters being able to vote in the Republican primary. The reality is that the path through Super Tuesday includes more states than not that have this dynamic.”
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But as Haley’s campaign cites her event in North Charleston, South Carolina, on Wednesday and $4 million advertising investment in the Palmetto State as evidence of her determination to undercut Trump, decisions will have to be made related to organizing and fundraising because Trump has an average 30 percentage point advantage in her backyard. Outside Haley groups, including Charles Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity, for example, have already acknowledged that South Carolina is part of “a steeper road ahead” for her because she skips Nevada’s caucuses in two weeks.
“Our teams will continue talking to South Carolina voters in support of Nikki Haley,” AFP Action senior adviser Emily Seidel said. “We are laser focused on electing the candidates who can be the firewall preventing one party progressive rule of the federal government. We have three ways to win: the Senate, the House, and the presidential primary. Through our multi-pronged effort we are prepared to get this done.”