Donald Trump continues to dominate the race for the Republican presidential nomination, enjoying a 16-point lead in New Hampshire days before it becomes the second state to vote, according to a major new poll.
Suffolk University, the Boston Globe and NBC found the former president at 50% support in New Hampshire, to 34% for the former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley. Ron DeSantis, the hard-right governor of Florida, who edged out Haley for second in Iowa this week, was a distant third at 5%.
In New Hampshire, undeclared voters can take part in state or presidential primaries. Many observers think such voters will have an outsized effect on the Republican primary this year, given the lack of real Democratic contest because Joe Biden is president.
In the new poll, Trump dominated among registered Republicans and voters who called themselves conservatives. Haley led among moderates and independents.
David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center in Boston, told the Globe: “Haley’s had a tough week: underperforming in Iowa, trying to answer Trump’s attacks on her positions on social security and immigration, and the recent [Vivek] Ramaswamy endorsement of Trump helping him with younger GOP voters.”
Ramaswamy, a brash biotech entrepreneur with whom Haley frequently clashed in debates, dropped out after finishing fourth in Iowa.
For Haley, Paleologos said, there was still time “to at least close the gap with undecided voters or even with some Trump voters, and pull Trump below 50”.
Other recent polls have shown Haley closing the gap in New Hampshire. On Wednesday, the American Research Group had Haley and Trump tied at 40% each.
Not all polls are created equal. The polling analysis site FiveThirtyEight.com gives the American Research Group a C+ rating. Suffolk University gets an A-.
After New Hampshire, the next state to vote will be Haley’s own. The FiveThirtyEight average for South Carolina puts Trump at 55%, Haley at 25% and DeSantis at 12%. Nationally, the site puts Trump at 63%, and Haley and DeSantis both 41 points behind.
With Trump displaying such dominance despite facing unprecedented legal jeopardy – 91 criminal charges, various civil suits and attempts to keep him off the ballot for inciting an insurrection – most observers think Haley must win in New Hampshire if the primary is to present anything like a meaningful contest.
Seeking to present a straight choice between her and Trump, Haley said she would not take part in New Hampshire debates planned for Thursday (to be hosted by ABC) and Sunday (CNN). As Trump has skipped all debates so far, that left DeSantis the only contender willing to appear.
Both debates were scrapped. CNN said: “We will continue to pursue other opportunities as the campaign season progresses through 2024, including candidate town halls this week with Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley.”
Haley told CNN that Trump was “who I’m running against, that’s who I want. At the end of the day, he’s the frontrunner … There is nobody else I need to debate.”
But on Wednesday Trump was more than 250 miles south of New Hampshire, in court in New York City in a defamation suit brought by the writer E Jean Carroll, whose claim that Trump raped her has already been deemed “substantially true” by the judge.
Claiming Haley was “terrified of getting smoked” on the debate stage, the DeSantis campaign posted Iowa remarks in which Haley said of Trump: “You can’t have an election and not appear on a debate stage in front of the people who are gonna be voting for you. That’s an arrogant approach to think you don’t have to do that.”
Haley and DeSantis were campaigning in New Hampshire on Tuesday but DeSantis was reportedly preparing to switch focus to South Carolina. Once a fundraising juggernaut, the DeSantis campaign has seen donations fall in line with polling results.
“It’s a pretty sober conversation in terms of how much more the campaign can raise in this environment,” an unnamed source told the Washington Post. Elsewhere, the DeSantis-supporting Super Pac Never Back Down began laying off staff.
DeSantis sought to sound a warning to voters, telling CNN that should Trump be the Republican nominee, the presidential election “will revolve around all these legal issues, his trials, perhaps convictions … and about things like January 6” – the deadly attack on Congress Trump incited as he attempted to overturn his 2020 defeat.
Republicans, DeSantis said, would “lose if voters are making a decision based on that. We don’t want it to be a referendum on those issues.”
Many agree. Digesting the result in Iowa, JB Pritzker, the Democratic governor of Illinois and a Biden surrogate, told MSNBC: “Almost half of the base of the Republican party showing up for this caucus voted against Donald Trump.
“Think about that. I think that is telling. It tells you the weakness of Donald Trump and also the opportunity for Democrats because in the end … if the base doesn’t turn out for Donald Trump in the general election enthusiastically and Democrats turn out [their] base, this is all about independents – and independents don’t like Donald Trump.”
