The Unfolding of the Inevitable—2

Nikki Haley tries to win while losing, and we should hope she somehow pulls it off (however implausible that outcome might be)

Republican presidential candidate former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley delivers remarks at her primary night rally at the Grappone Conference Center on January 23, 2024 in Concord, New Hampshire. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

I’ve been predicting for quite a while that Donald Trump would win every primary and caucus this season by double digits, which would be an extremely decisive outcome. Since it looks like Trump will have won New Hampshire by eleven points (roughly 54 to Nikki Haley’s 43 percent), my prediction stands and is likely to be verified by reality, especially since few states ahead are more perfectly suited to Haley’s campaign than New Hampshire. Its Republicans are wealthier, better educated, and more secular than average for the GOP in 2024, and the state’s voters on both sides of the aisle are used to going their own way and defying partisan hopes and expectations. That’s why I recently argued in the New York Times that, whether or not she managed to win New Hampshire, its primary would almost certainly end up being the high-water mark for her campaign.

Winning the Expectations Game

I stand by that judgment, but I will admit that Haley did somewhat better yesterday than I expected her to. Polls taken in the week since the Iowa caucuses pointed to a loss in the 15-20-point range, and she lost by less than that. Horserace pundits call that “beating expectations.” I’m the first to concede that this is an absurd way to think about a political campaign. It’s like the stock market spiking 500 points because the jobs report says 250,000 people found work the previous month when analysts expected the number to be more like 150,000. Call it political commentary as shadowboxing.

And yet, it’s also true that Haley is sailing into very strong headwinds. Her party is quickly consolidating around Trump, with new endorsements announced every day, along with calls to come together around the presumptive nominee. The brief moment of elation for her campaign that followed Chris Christie dropping out was dampened almost immediately by Vivek Ramaswamy and Ron DeSantis doing the same while endorsing Trump. Their support going to Trump pretty much perfectly canceled out Christie’s going to her. Then there were those polls showing that her hopes for winning New Hampshire were unlikely to be fulfilled.

Given all of that, winning 43 percent of the vote and nearly coming within single digits against the semi-incumbent former president is more than respectable. It means that an awful lot of voters were highly motivated to vote against Trump and perfectly content to make Haley the vehicle for their displeasure. If you squint and tilt your head at just the right angle, that’s a combination of factors that, if combined with a surge of favorable, optimistic media coverage, and a very smart, precisely targeted, relentless campaign against Trump over the next month, just might (maybe possibly) change the dynamic in South Carolina enough for Haley to edge out the former president in her home state.