In recent weeks there has been a lot of talk about Nikki Haley, the only woman candidate in the Republican primaries for the presidential elections in the United States: her electoral campaign is gaining momentum, so much so that many observers are starting to describe her as the best and most credible alternative to former President Donald Trump, who however remains largely favored.
Haley announced her candidacy in February 2023, but initially no one considered her particularly electorally dangerous either for Trump or for Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida who for months was considered Trump’s main opponent in the party. DeSantis’ campaign, however, never took off, and indeed seems to be close to sinking definitively. Haley, on the other hand, has some chances to stay in the race and transform a primary that seemed obvious into a real competition.
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Haley has a long career in the Republican Party: she was governor of South Carolina for two terms, between 2011 and 2017, and then ambassador to the United Nations during the years of Trump’s presidency, between 2017 and 2018. She is certainly a conservative candidate , but in comparison with Trump she is considered by many to be an almost “tranquilising” alternative: despite having been part of the Trump administration she is seen as a representative of the party establishment, even if she tries not to antagonize the more radical component of the electorate . All the votes of the Republicans worried about a possible new mandate for Trump, whose rhetoric in this campaign has been increasingly radical and fascist, could converge on her.
A meeting with voters in Iowa (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)
The Republican primaries will begin on January 15th in Iowa, a state in the Midwest, before continuing in New Hampshire, in the northeast, on January 23rd. The calendar could help Haley confirm herself as a credible alternative: Trump’s victory in Iowa caucus seems obvious, and Haley’s goal is to get second place by overtaking DeSantis. In New Hampshire conditions are more favorable to Haley, who according to polls has almost 30 percent of the vote against 41 percent for Trump and just 6 percent for DeSantis.
There are various factors that could favor Haley in New Hampshire, starting from the demographic characteristics: it is one of the richest states in the country, the electorate is particularly moderate and there are many people with degrees (39 percent), a sector of the population in which Trump’s approval rating is lower. In December the popular governor Chris Sununu he said publicly to support Haley, giving her campaign a major boost.
Recently his candidacy was also strengthened by the withdrawal from the primaries of the former governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie: according to polls he could count on 12 percent of the preferences in New Hampshire, and many could decide to fall back on Haley, often indicated as second choice. Furthermore, the regulations of the primaries in the state also allow so-called “unaffiliated” voters to vote, i.e. voters who are not formally registered with the party. According to analysts, even those who do not identify as Republicans could decide to vote “against Trump”, choosing the most credible person to oppose him: Haley.
The ideal scenario for Haley would be to achieve a good second place in Iowa, perhaps keeping Trump below the threshold of 50 percent of the votes, and then beat him in New Hampshire, or at least come very close to doing so. At that point her candidacy would gain further strength, while DeSantis’s would risk being definitively dismantled.
The third state to vote will be South Carolina, on February 24, where Haley is well known thanks to her two terms as governor. Currently Trump is in the leadbut Haley’s past could help her.
The latest television confrontation with Ron DeSantis (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)
The three primaries in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina are only the beginning of a long electoral journey which will formally end with the convention July Republican Party, during which the name of the presidential candidate will be made official. Despite the great media coverage they normally receive, the three states from which the primaries begin are rather small and not very influential. An important date to keep an eye on will instead be March 5th, the so-called Super Tuesdaywhen 15 states will vote simultaneously and the final results will become much clearer.
However, the road for Haley remains uphill: disappointing results in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina could in fact almost close the game not only for her, but for all of Trump’s opponents.
From 2016 to today, Haley has changed her mind about Trump many times, going from opponent to faithful supporter, up to the prudent attitude adopted during this electoral campaign, in which paradoxically even Trump’s main adversaries have rarely attacked him and more often praised him, in fear of displeasing the party’s fierce base which recognizes itself in the so-called MAGA movement (Make America Great Again), close to Trump.
Among other things, Haley has promised to pardon Trump if she is elected, effectively canceling the consequences of the many ongoing trials in which he is implicated, and has not ruled out accepting a candidacy for vice president if Trump instead wins the primaries. Only in the last Republican television debate on January 11 (which Trump deserted, as always in this campaign) Haley attacked her actions a little more openly, saying for example: «For right or wrong, [Trump] brings chaos with it.”
– Read also: Nikki Haley has changed her mind about Trump many times
Haley’s image also seems unlikely to fit with what the Republican party has become in recent years. She comes from a family of immigrants from the Indian region of Punjab, and Haley is the surname of her husband Michael: she was born in 1972 in Bamberg, South Carolina, as Nimrata Nikki Randhawa, a name with which she is still called today by her adversaries and opponents of the right. The characteristics that made her particularly promising at the beginning of her career – she is a woman, the daughter of immigrants and non-white – could weaken her today, in a conservative front that has become particularly radicalized and hosts openly racist and misogynistic positions.
Trump and Haley at the United Nations in 2018 (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Her political ideas are instead aligned with the conservatism of the Republican Party, especially on civil rights issues: she is against abortion, against the extension of new rights to the LGBTQ+ community, a supporter of the so-called traditional family and the freedom to bear arms. She has more traditional and reassuring positions in foreign policy (she is among the staunchest supporters within the party of military aid to Ukraine), but she has been at the center of a great controversy when a few days after Christmas, answering a voter’s question about the causes of the American Civil War, he failed to mention the main one: slavery. Haley she later apologized.
Some election adverts from the committee that supports Trump’s campaign have begun to attack her by claiming that her economic choices would lead to higher taxes and an increase in the retirement age, but at least for the moment the Republican primaries do not seem particularly focused on content and concrete proposals, as well as on the figure of Trump and on possible alternatives to a candidate facing four criminal trials.
If Haley manages to present herself as “right-wing enough” to satisfy the base most motivated to participate in the primaries, but “reassuring enough” to convince moderates and donors frightened by the extremism and unpredictability of the former president, she will be able to try to become a real opponent for Trump. But doing so presupposes political and balancing skills that not everyone recognizes. On the day she renounced her candidacy, Christie was recorded in a blurb in which he said of her: «she will be swept away, you and I both know it. She isn’t up to par.”