United States: New Hampshire, crucial step for Nikki Haley before South Carolina
In the United States, this Tuesday, January 23, second stage of the Republican presidential primary.
Last week, Donald Trump crushed the competition in Iowa, and this Sunday Florida Governor Ron DeSantis preferred to throw in the towel.
Only Donald Trump and his ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, remain in the running.
New Hampshire is therefore a crucial step for the Republican if she wants to continue the primaries.
Republican presidential candidate and former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley smiles as she chats with customers during a campaign stop at a restaurant, Monday, Jan. 22, 2024, in Concord, capital of the State of New Hampshire.
AP - Charles Krupa
By: Christophe Paget Follow
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At first glance, Ron DeSantis' withdrawal is good news for Nikki Haley, who always wanted the primary to be reduced to a duel between Donald Trump and her: "
The voters deserve to decide whether we start again with Trump and Biden, or if we take another conservative path
,” that’s what the candidate said this Sunday.
She also promised to participate in the following primary, that of South Carolina, and even on Super Tuesday on March 5 - with several primaries taking place at the same time.
And this, she assured, whatever her result in New Hampshire.
But here, Nikki Haley is perhaps stepping forward a little, because she still has to show that she is a match for Donald Trump.
Last week in Iowa, she only achieved a disappointing third place.
As long as Ron DeSantis was in the race, the Republican was at least confident of beating a candidate soundly in New Hampshire – the governor of Florida was credited by only 8%.
But today only the bulldozer Donald Trump remains facing her, with polls giving him more than 50%.
And that was before Ron DeSantis called to vote for him by throwing in the towel: according to a recent poll, we should now add to the former president's score two-thirds of voters who planned to vote for Ron DeSantis .
Read alsoUnited States: Ron DeSantis withdraws from the race for the Republican nomination and will support Trump
Independents in the Republican primary
But New Hampshire is more moderate than Iowa, and therefore more receptive to Nikki Haley's campaign.
Because in this state, independents are very numerous, and they have the right to vote in the Republican primary – knowing that they usually vote for the moderate candidate.
Nikki Haley therefore particularly campaigned with them - Donald Trump also criticizes her by saying that she "
has entered into an unnatural alliance with those who are Republicans in name only and the anti-Trump people
".
In any case, since December, she has doubled her score in New Hampshire, going from 18 to 36% according to a latest poll - but she remains far behind the former president, and that's without counting the votes of Ron DeSantis.
Additionally, now that Ron DeSantis has dropped out of the race, Donald Trump is focusing his attacks on Nikki Haley.
On Sunday, he described her as not tough enough, not intelligent enough, that she was not respected enough... And just to show her that if she participates in the next stage, South Carolina - the State where she comes from and where she was governor, it will still be very difficult for her, he brought deputies from South Carolina to New Hampshire who support him.
Final stab in the back for the Republican: Senator Tim Scott, former primary candidate and friend of Nikki Haley for years, has just called to vote for Donald Trump.
Nikki Haley: from daughter of immigrants to candidate in the Republican primary for the 2024 presidential election
Nimrata Haley, known as Nikki Haley, was born in 1972 in Bamberg, South Carolina.
His parents, of Sikh faith, are from the Indian state of Punjab.
In 1994, she obtained a diploma in accounting and helped her parents in their clothing store.
Ten years later, in 2004, she was elected to the South Carolina House of Representatives, then became governor of this state in 2010. She was the first woman to obtain this position in the “Deep South” , and the second person of Indian origin to become governor.
Woman and daughter of immigrants, she nevertheless remains very anchored in the conservative line of the party – on immigration, abortion, the economy… and forcefully defends the right of Americans to own firearms.
She tried, unsuccessfully, to oppose same-sex marriages in her state.
In 2015, Nikki Haley began making headlines on the national stage by signing a law removing the Confederate flag from the Capitol, after the murder of nine African-Americans by a white supremacist.
In 2016, she supported several rivals of Donald Trump in the 2016 Republican primary, but he, once president, made her his ambassador to the UN.
She remained there for two years, fighting forcefully (and with her usual outspokenness) the Iranian nuclear agreement - from which the United States would exit, and became the spokesperson for the billionaire's foreign policy.
Since the end of Donald Trump's mandate, and before being a candidate in the Republican primary herself, Nikki Haley has often been critical of him.
She spoke out against the attack by her supporters on the Capitol on January 6, 2020, criticized the former president when it turned out that he was keeping secret defense documents at his home... And unlike her opponent , it continues to strongly support Ukraine against Russia.
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