New Hampshire
Nikki Haley keeps one eye on Iowa as she seeks to win New Hampshire primary
Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley faces a unique challenge in the final two weeks before the Jan. 15 Iowa caucuses.
She must simultaneously woo Iowans who could give her an added boost above rival Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) while stumping in New Hampshire, where independent voters could help her defeat former President Donald Trump, the front-runner, in the state’s primary on Jan. 23.
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Unlike DeSantis and to a lesser extent Trump, Haley has not staked her 2024 campaign on winning the Iowa caucuses. She has instead placed a sizable emphasis on New Hampshire and her home state of South Carolina. But given Iowa’s outsize advantage in the primary, a strong showing there will be crucial in her bid to replace DeSantis as the only viable alternative candidate to Trump.
The Florida governor has gone all in for Iowa, campaigning in all 99 counties and positioning himself for an outright win or a strong second-place finish behind Trump. Haley’s campaign and allies are covertly hoping a second-place finish in Iowa would steal momentum away from DeSantis ahead of the New Hampshire primary, where Haley is hoping for a second-place finish or better as well.
“I think the expectations for Haley in Iowa are appropriately less, but if she can overperform there, then I think she’s got, I think, a strong team waiting for her in New Hampshire led by the most popular Republican in the state,” said Jim Merrill, a seasoned New Hampshire GOP strategist, of Haley and the support of Gov. Chris Sununu (R-NH). “And then she’s going to go to her home state in South Carolina. So it feels like a pretty shrewd strategy that they’re executing here with the final two weeks.”
“It’s tougher to organize in Iowa because it’s harder to find the caucus people … and it’s heavily dominated by evangelical Christians,” said Linda Fowler, a political scientist at Dartmouth University. “So with that context, I think New Hampshire makes sense for her. Plus, she has an enthusiastic governor who’s stumping for her.”
The former U.N. ambassador and South Carolina governor has barnstormed the Granite State with Sununu since she earned his backing last month. Yet Haley hasn’t quite abandoned Iowa and even plans to bring Sununu with her to campaign in Des Moines on Friday. She finished the final days of 2023 in the Hawkeye State and will face off against DeSantis during a CNN debate in Iowa on Jan. 10. (Trump is skipping the debate for a Fox News town hall at the same time.)
“Nikki isn’t taking any voter for granted. She’s traveling across Iowa, answering every question and shaking every hand. We’re fighting for every inch,” said Olivia Perez-Cubas, Haley’s spokeswoman.
There is some historical precedence that Haley’s gamble could pay off. The late Arizona Sen. John McCain in his 2000 presidential run mostly ignored Iowa and went on to beat George W. Bush in New Hampshire but lost the South Carolina primary. He would ultimately lose the nomination to Bush. But during his 2008 presidential run, McCain again bypassed Iowa and won the New Hampshire primary and the South Carolina primary before eventually becoming the GOP nominee.
Haley’s allies aren’t wasting any funds in helping her replicate McCain’s 2008 strategy.
SFA Fund, the super PAC backing Haley’s campaign, outspent all other groups in 2023 at $42 million, according to the ad tracking company AdImpact. That’s roughly $2 million more than DeSantis’s super PAC, Never Back Down, spent in 2023 at $40.2 million. Trump’s super PAC, MAGA Inc., spent $34.4 million.
SFA Fund is the top spending advertiser of ’23.
Andy Beshear is the top spending candidate. Despite the #MDSen primary being in May 2024, David Trone was the 3rd highest-spending candidate. Tim Scott, who dropped out last month, is the highest-spending Republican candidate. pic.twitter.com/DSnbyLQYOB
— AdImpact Politics (@AdImpact_Pol) December 29, 2023
Americans for Prosperity, the billionaire Koch family-backed group, is spending $70 million to boost Haley in Iowa. “We’re just now starting to see the money, and it could make a difference,” Fowler said of Americans for Prosperity’s efforts to help Haley.
The DeSantis campaign slammed both Haley and Trump and their supporters for spending more than $38.4 million in negative ad spending against the governor, the most out of all the 2024 candidates.
“And despite her team’s best efforts to keep expectations low for Haley in the Hawkeye State, the numbers don’t lie,” wrote Andrew Romeo, DeSantis’s campaign spokesman, in an email Tuesday. “The Wall Street Journal’s John McCormick noted yesterday how Haley and the super PAC supporting her will combine to drastically outspend the competition down the stretch in Iowa.”
Richard Arenberg, senior fellow in international and public affairs and visiting political science professor at Brown University, told the Washington Examiner that a respectable finish in Iowa will help Haley as she prepares to battle against Trump in New Hampshire, a state that will be decided by independents who make up the majority of voters.
But a recent flap-up over the origin of the Civil War could distract from Haley’s efforts. Haley caused a stir last week when she didn’t mention slavery as the cause of the war during a town hall event in New Hampshire. She cleaned up her comments in the aftermath of the backlash.
“I think that had a kind of chilling effect on the enthusiasm of some independents that maybe she could energize to come into the Republican primary and vote for her,” Arenberg said. “But a surprising second place in Iowa could maybe warm that up again.”
Scott Huffmon, a political scientist and the founder of the Center for Public Opinion and Policy Research at Winthrop University, claimed the controversy wouldn’t change her performance in Iowa. It “could move the odd New Hampshire independent,” but it would have “no impact on South Carolina.”
“And, despite her promise to the Sons of Confederate Veterans to not remove the Confederate flag from the statehouse when she first ran for governor, she publicly called for it to come down after the Mother Emanuel massacre, so that inoculates her somewhat,” he added referencing the 2015 murders of nine African American members of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina.
Still, Haley must face the gargantuan task of somehow beating Trump in New Hampshire, where he polls at 46.3%, according to the RealClearPolitics average of the Granite State, and Haley polls at 24.8%.
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“Trump is still king of the hill in New Hampshire. No question about it. His support has been pretty static. It hasn’t really moved up and hasn’t really moved down,” said Merrill. “Haley has accomplished, I think, half of the battle, which is getting yourself out of the scrum of all the other candidates, whether current candidates or those that have withdrawn like [former Vice President Mike] Pence or [Sen. Tim] Scott [R-SC] to position herself as the No. 2.”
The other half of the battle, Merrill added, is converting undecided voters and encouraging other people to consider voting due to the state’s same-day registration law. “I’m sure the Haley campaign has worked hard to identify people who aren’t currently registered but who could choose to do so Election Day and turn them out,” he said.
Soon after Joshua Bogden attempted to register to vote on the day of Portsmouth’s municipal elections Nov. 11, he faced a tough decision.
Bogden had not brought along a passport or birth certificate to prove his citizenship. And though he had previously been registered and voted in Wilton, poll workers told Bogden he needed to leave and return with one of those physical documents.
Bogden could either drive to city hall and request a same-day copy of his birth certificate, or rush home and find his own copy. But he had only hours until the polls closed, and only minutes before Portsmouth stopped its birth certificate service at 4:30.
In the end, Bogden decided to drive home and chance that he could find the certificate, he said during a press conference Thursday. He did find it and was able to vote. But the hassle he faced is at the center of arguments by some that recent changes to New Hampshire’s voter registration laws are too strict and will result in frustrated voters choosing not to vote.
“Luckily, I lived nearby,” he said. “But if there had been any more sort of traffic or anything in my personal life — going home to pick up the kids, trying to do this after work — there’s no way I would have been able to come back and vote successfully.”
Since a new law took effect November 2024, New Hampshire voters are required to produce hard copies of citizenship documents the first time they register to vote in the state. The law eliminated the previous option for voters registering on Election Day to sign a “qualified voter affidavit” that allowed them to vote without proving citizenship by testifying on penalty of perjury that they were a U.S. citizen.
Republican supporters of the law, House Bill 1569, say the new requirements are reasonable and necessary to close loopholes that could allow non-citizens to vote, and that voters should prepare by obtaining their citizenship documents in advance
Lawmakers also passed a follow-up law in 2025, House Bill 464, that allows local election officials to access the Statewide Voter Registration System, New Hampshire Vital Records, and Division of Motor Vehicle databases in order to attempt to corroborate a resident’s citizenship.
But a number of voting rights groups are suing in federal court to block the law, arguing it creates an unconstitutional burden and that it will disenfranchise eligible voters, especially those for whom obtaining a passport or birth certificate could be difficult.
In the meantime, the October and November municipal elections have offered a fresh look into how the new law might affect voting in practice.
According to a tally by the New Hampshire Campaign for Voting Rights, 123 voters were turned away from the polls due to a lack of documents. Combined with the 121 residents the group reported were turned away for the same reason during town meetings in spring, at least 244 people were turned away in 2025, the group says.
Voting rights advocates and Democrats argue those tallies are a cautionary tale for the state ahead of the September 2026 state primaries and the November 2026 midterm federal election. Many more people are likely to vote in those elections, and many more who don’t bring along their citizenship documentation could be turned away, advocates warn.
They hope U.S. District Court Judge Samantha Elliott, who is presiding over the lawsuit, will issue an injunction ahead of the midterms. A full evidentiary trial in that case is expected in February.
At Thursday’s press conference, advocates attempted to show the difficulty posed by the new documentary requirements, which election law experts have called the strictest in the country.
In addition to Bogden, Brayden Rumsey, a Dover voter, said he had to drive home to retrieve his passport in order to vote Nov. 11. Rumsey was not aware of the new citizenship documentation requirements; he had assumed that showing a REAL ID driver’s license would suffice, since to obtain it he had been required to show his passport.
“I have my own car. I have my own way of getting there. I don’t have any kids to take care of. I have access to a passport and access to my birth certificate that I could easily get,” he said. “I know a lot of people don’t have that privilege like I do.”
And Michael Blanchette, who recently moved from Concord to Manchester, said he had called the city ahead of the Nov. 11 election to get confirmation of his citizenship using his previous registration and presence on the voter database. But despite that confirmation, Blanchette said he was still asked for citizenship documentation at the Manchester Ward 7 polls, and had to wait an hour for multiple election workers and city officials to clear him to vote.
“(I knew) if I went back home and took my pain meds, I was not coming back out,” he said. “And it was now or never. So I stuck through it. I didn’t realize it would just drag on.”
Linnea Hartsuyker, a supervisor of the checklist in Dover’s Ward 5, said she had seen at least one prospective voter leave and not return once learning of the requirements.
Hartsuyker said the 2025 law providing election workers access to the state voter file proved helpful, allowing her to verify at least those voters who had already registered. That remedy would not have worked for new voters who moved from out of state, she said.
“Last year at the general (election) I and my team registered 50 people per hour for 12 hours,” she said. “That’s almost one person per minute with the old system, and I am quite worried about being able to do that in the coming election, at the midterms.”
Access to those state databases might vary from polling place to polling place depending on internet availability and the amount of time and manpower available during a rush of voters, critics say. Rumsey and Blanchette said workers at their polling places did not appear to have direct access to those databases, necessitating calls to city hall officials.
It is not clear how the apparent tallies of voters turned away from voting might affect the trial in next year’s lawsuit.
In a July 29 ruling, Elliott ruled that some of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, filed in 2024, lacked standing because their experiences did not directly demonstrate a potential unconstitutional barrier to voting. But she granted standing to other plaintiffs, such as the Coalition for Open Democracy, the League of Women Voters of New Hampshire, the Forward Foundation, and three plaintiffs who were minors but planned to register to vote when they turned 18 and said the need to procure documentation was a burden.
The Attorney General’s Office has defended the law and said the constitutional challenges are not substantiated. In a Nov. 7 memorandum asking Elliott to dismiss the case, Assistant Attorney General Michael DeGrandis argued that the law struck a balance between allowing every eligible person to vote and safeguarding the process from fraud.
“New Hampshire pairs that open access with commonsense eligibility checks so only the votes of eligible voters are counted,” DeGrandis wrote. “Striking this balance is essential to guarantee an election system that is both welcoming and vigilant in protecting the integrity of the ballot.”
And he wrote that the law does not impede the organizations suing, and that the individual plaintiffs “have not offered competent evidence of cognizable injuries.”
“It is Plaintiffs’ burden to come forward with definite, competent evidence of injury, causation, and redressability, but they have not,” DeGrandis wrote.
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