Donald Trump has a massive polling 36-point lead over Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in Iowa, 58-22. Former South Carolina Gov. and UN Ambassador Nikki Haley comes in third in the Hawkeye State with 13%.
Iowa will hold its caucuses less than a month from today, on Jan. 15. Trump has been the presumed winner of the caucuses since last summer and in the nearly four months since then, the needle hasn't moved much.
New Hampshire is a different story. The Granite State electorate is independent and, over the last 50 years, it has made a point of generally ignoring the polls to render its own verdict on the candidates. New Hampshire voters are generally more moderate than other GOP voters.
With a little more than a month to go before the New Hampshire primary, Trump still holds a commanding lead. But Nikki Haley appears to have consolidated the anti-Trump vote in New Hampshire in a way that she hasn't been able to do elsewhere except in her home state of South Carolina.
Trump leads Haley 44%-29% in New Hampshire, according to a new CBS/YouGov poll. This represents a huge shift to Haley since September, when the former UN ambassador received less than 10% support.
“I’ll be the first one to say Donald Trump remains the odds-on favorite to be the nominee,” Republican strategist Jim Merrill said. “There’s no question about it. But there are a lot of variables that need to be played out yet, both on the ground in the early states and then with external events that nobody can control.”
Trump has a big lead in fundraising, in organizational muscle, and in his ability to draw free media coverage. All he has to do is say something outrageous that he knows will get the left-wing media's blood running and he's dominating the news cycle once again.
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Even though Haley is surging in New Hampshire, she's far behind in every other state except South Carolina. She's got one, slim shot at derailing the Trump campaign, and that's if she wins New Hampshire.
A close second won't help. Haley needs to win somewhere early, and that means her only shot is New Hampshire. There is a short month between the New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries with the Nevada caucuses in between. But if Haley can somehow close the gap with Trump in New Hampshire and win, the race takes on an entirely different perspective.
Donald Trump has flown above the GOP primary field by setting himself apart from the rest. He won't debate the primary candidates and he rarely mentions them by name. That could change with a Haley win in New Hampshire. So the question for Haley becomes, "What's next?"
Tom Rath, a former New Hampshire attorney general, argued that the Haley campaign needed to articulate what comes next after the Granite State, expressing uncertainty about how well she will perform in her home state of South Carolina.
“I think at some point they need to show either through data or, you know, conversations with folks like you, ‘Here’s where we’re going next and here’s how we’re going to do it,’” Rath said.
Haley’s campaign sees the next phase of the race as a probable two-person match-up in South Carolina between her and Trump.
Haley's chances are a matter of esoteric conversation among bored politicos who don't want to write about Trump-Biden anymore. Could it happen? Of course, it could. We've seen stranger things happen in politics in our lifetime. Remember President Dean? Or Even President Hillary Clinton?
The probabilities say Haley doesn't have a chance. If candidates paid attention to probabilities, the history of the United States would be much different, indeed.
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