MANCHESTER, New Hampshire — Former President Donald Trump is on the brink of winning the Republican presidential nomination for the third time, with just one person standing in his way: former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley.
A 2024 GOP primary field that once included 14 Republicans is now a two-person race. And after Tuesday night’s New Hampshire primary, only one candidate appears likely to cinch the GOP nomination: Trump.
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Haley is fighting for political survival ahead of the Feb. 24 South Carolina primary and amid growing calls to drop out of the race. A third candidate, Ryan Binkley, has no credible shot at the White House but has outlasted better-known candidates, including former Vice President Mike Pence, Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.
Trump’s ability to defeat the majority of his competitors after he cost Republicans key races in the 2022 midterm elections and is facing 91 felony charges is emblematic of his remaking of the modern-day GOP in his image.
GOP leadership is quickly falling in line behind Trump as he fends off Haley and the race heads toward South Carolina.
“And just a little note to Nikki, she’s not going to win,” Trump taunted during his New Hampshire victory speech Tuesday night.
Scott, who dropped out of the presidential race and a potential vice presidential pick, called on the Republican Party to mobilize in support of Trump.
“It is time for the Republican Party to coalesce around our nominee and the next President of the United States: Donald Trump,” Scott said at Trump’s watch party. “Let’s get that party started tonight.”
None of Trump’s competitors could break his hold over Republican voters, who propelled Trump to victory in Iowa and New Hampshire, the first two early nominating states. Most challengers made key strategy mistakes that cost them distinct lanes to run on through the primary season.
Trump thwarts DeSantis
DeSantis was the best-positioned candidate to take on Trump last year after a resounding second-term win as governor. He sought to stake his claim as the heir apparent to Trump, minus the legal baggage and drama.
Trump had other plans.
Before DeSantis had even announced his campaign, Trump began attacking him, branding him as “Ron DeSanctimonious” and nabbing key endorsements from Florida lawmakers in a bid to knee-cap the governor.
Notably, DeSantis was also cautious in how willing he was to excoriate Trump directly, fearing that he could alienate Trump’s base. But political experts claimed that without taking on the former president, voters had very little reason to side with DeSantis rather than Trump.
“He looked at the very beginning like there was some element of the party that was coalescing behind him,” said Richard Arenberg, senior fellow in international and public affairs and visiting political science professor at Brown University. “But that collapse as the campaign unfolded, there was these were basically people who very much were Trump voters, and in the end they saw no reason to vote for DeSantis.”
The Florida governor was also beset by internal staff problems, not just in his campaign but in Never Back Down, the super PAC that had taken on unprecedented parts of DeSantis’s primary infrastructure. Stories about Never Back Down infighting frequently distracted from his wooing of GOP voters.
Despite winning key Iowa endorsements from Gov. Kim Reynolds (R-IA) and evangelical kingmaker Bob Vander Plaats, Trump defeated DeSantis by 30 percentage points during the state’s caucuses, which signaled the end of the Florida governor’s campaign.
GOP rallies around Trump legal drama
Trump’s four criminal cases marked a new phase in the primary as his poll numbers began to rise, DeSantis’s viability as a candidate began sinking, and the primary race became one for second place.
Most of the primary candidates rallied around Trump to slam the FBI and Justice Department for a two-tiered system that punished conservatives. It was a far cry from a time when politicians would have lambasted a candidate over just one felony indictment and called for the candidate to drop out.
“The candidates realized that Trump has such a lock on the base of the GOP that there was no way to really come out against Trump,” said Steve Hilding, a Republican strategist and vice president of political consulting firm McShane. “They had to defend him to an extent, saying that this is weaponization of the DOJ and other three-letter agencies.”
DeSantis lamented how much attention Trump’s legal drama received late last month.
“If I could have one thing change, I wish Trump hadn’t been indicted on any of this stuff,” DeSantis told Christian Broadcasting Network’s David Brody.
“It also has just crowded out, I think, so much other stuff, and it’s sucked out a lot of oxygen,” the governor added.
Even Pence, Trump’s running mate in 2016 and 2020, could not shake the ire of the GOP base when he broke with Trump over certifying the 2020 election. The former vice president repeatedly explained that he chose his constitutional duty over bowing to Trump’s pressure not to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election. Those who participated in the riot responded by chanting “Hang Mike Pence” as they stormed the Capitol.
Pence became the first major candidate to exit the race in late October 2023 as his campaign failed to gain traction with voters during the primary.
“It’s become clear to me this is not my time,” Pence said at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s leadership summit in Las Vegas.
Biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy was a political novice who floundered in the primary after a promising showing at the first GOP primary debate in late August 2023. He was more often seen as Trump’s acolyte due to his antics regarding the former president, once going so far as to call for his fellow candidates to refuse to appear on the ballot in states that used the 14th Amendment’s insurrection clause to disqualify Trump from running for president.
After Trump vanquished the field during the Iowa caucuses, Ramaswamy dropped out and endorsed the former president. He, too, is now a potential vice presidential candidate. DeSantis, who bet his campaign on winning in Iowa by winning the evangelical vote, exited the race a week later and tepidly endorsed Trump.
The consequences of battling for second place
One thing that worked in Trump’s favor was the crowded field’s refusal to coalesce around one alternative candidate, being more likely to blast one another instead of aiming at the former president.
“If you want to be the king, you got to go after the king,” national Republican strategist Brian Seitchik said. “And this notion of waiting for Trump’s voters to move off of Trump, folks have been waiting since 2015 for that to happen. The only way to grab his voters was to pull them away, and nobody really did that.”
Haley and DeSantis’s hesitance to attack Trump repeatedly was called out by Christie, who criticized both candidates for running for “second place.”
“I’m the only candidate running against Trump,” Christie told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell in mid-November 2023. “Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis seem to be running against each other for second place. Good for them.”
Haley is attempting to cobble together a coalition of moderates, independents, and disaffected Republicans who want the GOP to move beyond Trump’s glory days to win the nomination.
Yet after voters in Iowa and New Hampshire, home to a large share of independents, delivered victory to Trump, Haley’s path to the nomination may be on the brink if she can’t defeat him in her home state of South Carolina.
In a homecoming rally in South Carolina held one day after the Granite State primary, Haley thumbed her nose at the former president.
“Bring it, Donald, show me what you got,” she taunted.
The never-Trumpers never stood a chance
The anti-Trump candidates such as Christie, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, and former Texas Rep. Will Hurd barely had any chance at becoming the GOP’s standard-bearer.
Christie, the most virulent anti-Trump candidate, repeatedly was booed on the campaign trail. He refused to endorse Trump or Haley, whom his voters in New Hampshire were more likely to support, after he exited the race days before the Iowa caucuses.
Other lesser-known candidates, such as Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, did not last long in the race. After failing to make the first debate, Suarez dropped out.
Hurd endorsed Haley when he exited the race, as did Hutchinson, who lasted through the Iowa caucuses.
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Ultimately, Trump’s popularity among Republican voters dating back to the 2016 presidential cycle cemented his status as the front-runner.
Trump “should be the next candidate for the Republican Party, regardless of all the attacks and everything that have gone on,” said Micah Booth, 30, from Greenville, New Hampshire, in an interview with the Washington Examiner at the Fulchino Vineyard in Hollis, New Hampshire, after Donald Trump Jr. had finished stumping for his father.