Nikki Haley wants to hit the ground running in New Hampshire. Will it be enough to defeat Donald Trump?

EXETER, N.H – Shaking off a third-place finish in ruby red Iowa, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley has a new goal: Toppling former President Donald Trump in the purple state of New Hampshire.

Haley’s campaign was dealt a blow Monday night when, after all her efforts in the state, Iowa caucusgoers gave Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis just enough support to stay in the race. DeSantis finished in second, edging out Haley by approximately than 2,000 votes.

Yet the Haley campaign and its allies are clinging to a message that the 2024 presidential primary is now a two-person competition. In a concession speech in Iowa, Haley urged Granite State voters to pick her over Trump in next week’s primary to give the GOP best shot of beating President Joe Biden in November.

“Our campaign is the last best hope of stopping the Trump-Biden nightmare,” she told her supporters at her final event in Iowa.

Haley now comes to New Hampshire, where she's campaigning Tuesday in an area of the state that borders liberal Vermont and is known for voters with an independent streak. She spent the morning visiting local businesses with New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, and she is holding an evening event at a resort in the posh ski area of Bretton Woods.

Trump's victory in Iowa shouldn't surprise anyone, Sununu said in an interview with USA TODAY Tuesday afternoon. He argued thay Haley is courting a wider range of voters in the Granite State than her competitors.

"She's already exceeded expectations here, frankly," he said of New Hampshire. "It would be a tough mountain to climb to pull off a win, but it's actually plausible. It's doable. It's within a stone's throw, so to say so, and within the last week, a lot of things can change."

"She's going to campaign in New Hampshire fundamentally different over the last week than anybody else. She's not just kind of coming in, like Trump is doing his little country club town hall and disappearing. She's going to the north country. She's going to all the towns, she's doing the retail stops, and that's a huge opportunity that the other candidates aren't willing to capitalize on," the popular governor who endorsed Haley last month said.

Haley in two recent polls has managed to narrow Trump’s lead in the state that will hold the first-in-the-nation primary on Jan. 23. And that momentum comes as the former United Nations ambassador, along with Trump and DeSantis, are spreading out over New Hampshire ahead of its critical 2024 contest.

Trump is campaigning in Atkinson, an affluent town on the opposite end of the state that borders Massachusetts. DeSantis, who made a pit stop in Haley’s home state of South Carolina at the beginning of the day, will be in the western part of the state at several events on Tuesday afternoon.

DeSantis has resisted pressure from Haley and her allies to drop out of the competition. In a concession speech of his own on Monday evening he pledged to remain a candidate, telling his supporters, "We've got our ticket punched out of Iowa."

Meanwhile, Haley’s supporters have accused DeSantis of ignoring New Hampshire to focus on Iowa, with her New Hampshire co-chair Kim Rice calling it a “huge mistake..”

“This has always been a marathon not a sprint,” said Rice, former speaker pro-tempore in the New Hampshire House of Representatives. “Nikki has worked very, very hard in New Hampshire and Iowa, she has reached out and touched as many voters as she possibly could. Her message is resonating.”

Is New Hampshire a two-person race between Haley and Trump? 

In an email to press on Tuesday morning, Haley’s campaign circulated a survey from a New Hampshire-based research group showing her and Trump in a dead heat at 40%, with DeSantis trailing far behind at 4%. 

But the Florida governor doesn’t appear to be dropping out of the 2024 race anytime soon. He began the next phase of the campaign Tuesday with an event in Greenville, South Carolina – a state that will not hold its primary for more than a month 

Even if DeSantis were to drop out before the New Hampshire primary, it wouldn’t necessarily help Haley, pollster Andrew Smith said. 

Unlike polling that shows Haley benefiting from New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s decision to get out of the race, DeSantis’ exit would likely bolster Trump’s lead in the state. 

Nearly half of the New Jersey politician’s New Hampshire supporters said they would pick Haley as their second choice in a USA TODAY/Boston Globe/Suffolk University poll fielded before Christie ended his campaign. Almost 50% of likely DeSantis voters said they’d choose Trump as their second choice.

Supporters of entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who ended his campaign after coming in fourth on Monday evening in Iowa, similarly trended toward Trump, the White House hopeful he immediately endorsed for president.

“It's gonna be very hard for her to overcome the gap between her and Trump, no matter what the size of that gap is,” said Smith, head of the University of New Hampshire Survey Center. 

Only 4% of New Hampshire voters remain undecided according to the USA TODAY/Boston Globe/Suffolk University poll, but they could make a big impact on a close race.

Joseph Gagnon, a 25-year-old consultant from Londonderry, said he doesn't know which candidate he'll pick come election day, or which issues will sway him.

“I like Trump because of what he did as president of the United States. I like Ron DeSantis because of what he's been able to do down in Florida. I love Nikki Haley. As U.N. ambassador she made us feel like we were first on the world stage,” the Republican voter told USA TODAY. “Now with a week to go, I’m still waiting to see.”

But the window is closing for non-Trump candidates to sketch out a pathway to the nomination. For two decades, the winner of the New Hampshire primary has gone on to clinch the GOP nomination. 

This year, Trump is heavily favored to win New Hampshire – and if he does, pollsters say it’s a good bet that he’ll be the party’s nominee.

Candidates who garner 40% of the vote in New Hampshire typically win the state, said Smith, and most polls show Trump hovering around that threshold. 

He compared this year’s contest to the 2016 Republican primary, when a field of eight candidates competed in the state, splitting the vote and allowing Trump to win New Hampshire with a plurality rather than a majority of support. 

Haley at least has a strategic plan about how she can remain in the race, Matt Gorman, a GOP strategist who served as senior adviser to Tim Scott’s presidential campaign, said. 

“She can't waste a day. She needs to hit the ground running in New Hampshire,” said Gorman, who worked for Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, when they ran for president. “Especially since she really needs to capture momentum to be able to do well in that state

Haley allies get to work ahead of New Hampshire

Haley's campaign still has just days to pick up key endorsements and mobilize voters. Haley won the endorsement at the beginning of the week of Larry Hogan, the former Maryland governor who passed on a presidential bid of his own over fears that a large field would result in a Trump victory.

But in a move that shocked some of Haley’s top supporters, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., whose presidential campaign she endorsed in 2016 just before the South Carolina primary, gave his support to Trump over the weekend. So did former GOP candidate and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, who Trump suggested he’d give a position in his administration in a victory speech on Monday evening.

One of Haley’s best assets in New Hampshire could be a conservative grassroots group that in the last two months has been doing much of the heavy lifting.

Americans for Prosperity Action says it has talked with 170,000 households in the state since Nov. 28 and will be sending volunteers and staff to New Hampshire to campaign for Haley leading into next week’s primary.

Since endorsing her in late November, the group has spent $27 million boosting Haley with ads in early primary states, with spots stressing Haley's potential strength against President Joe Biden in a general election.

Haley’s campaign is also up with an ad in New Hampshire comparing Trump to Biden that emphasizes both politicians’ negative approval ratings.

“The question before Americans is now very clear: do you want more of the same? Or do you want a new generation of conservative leadership,” Haley told voters from Iowa after the caucus.

Haley said that she voted for Trump twice and was proud to serve in his administration. “But when I say more of the same, you know what I’m talking about.”

“Trump and Biden both lack a vision for our country’s future, because both are consumed by the past, by investigations, by vendettas, by grievances. America deserves better,” Haley said.

Contributing: Sudiksha Kochi; Margaret Cullen