Chris Christie’s exit should give Nikki Haley a chance in New Hampshire. Will it be enough?

Politics

In the most recent polls, Haley reached about 30% of the vote in New Hampshire.

Former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey delivers remarks during a campaign event where he announced he was suspending his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination in Windham, N.H., Jan. 10, 2024. Sophie Park/The New York Times

By Nate Cohn, New York Times Service

January 12, 2024 | 8:26 AM

Eight years ago, Chris Christie gave Donald Trump the biggest political assist of the 2016 campaign.

He eviscerated a surging Marco Rubio on the debate stage just days before the New Hampshire primary. In doing so, he ensured that the Republican mainstream would be divided and allowed Trump to regain his footing with a win after a loss in Iowa.

Trump won’t be getting the same favor again.

On Wednesday, Christie withdrew from the race. Whatever his intent, by bowing out he has effectively done what he didn’t do eight years ago: step out of the way of a mainstream conservative with moderate appeal, in this case Nikki Haley, who is surging heading into the New Hampshire primary.

In the most recent polls, she reached about 30% of the vote in New Hampshire. It was a tally that put her within striking distance of Trump and even made a victory imaginable. But she still trailed by about 12 percentage points, and her path to victory remained quite narrow.

With Christie out of the race, those 12 points don’t look so hard anymore. Christie has held around 10% of the vote in New Hampshire for months, and Haley and Trump would essentially be tied in New Hampshire if her support were hypothetically combined with Christie’s.

According to FiveThirtyEight on Wednesday night, Haley and Christie’s support added up to 41.5% of the vote in New Hampshire, to 42.4% for Trump.

Of course, not every one of Christie’s voters will back Haley. But in this particular case, there’s good reason to think the preponderance of his voters really will coalesce behind her.

Christie is the only vocal anti-Trump candidate and, not surprisingly, his supporters are the likeliest to be anti-Trump. In a CNN/UNH poll this week, 65% of Christie’s supporters said Haley was their second choice. In a CBS/YouGov poll last month, 75% of Christie’s supporters in New Hampshire said they would consider Haley. Just 9% said they would consider Trump.

With these numbers, Haley’s path to victory isn’t like hitting an inside straight — it is fairly straightforward. No, the Christie vote alone will probably not be enough. But she has been steadily gaining in the polls and, historically, there’s a lot of precedent for surging candidates to keep gaining — especially over a contest’s final days. With Trump at just 42% of the vote, there’s no reason to think her path is closed off.

Of course, a Haley win in New Hampshire would not mean that Trump’s path to the nomination was in jeopardy. Not even Christie seems optimistic about her chances; he was heard on a hot mic Wednesday saying “she’s going to get smoked,” presumably referring to Haley, and he did not endorse her.

Her appeal is concentrated among highly educated and moderate voters, who represent an outsize share of the electorate in New Hampshire. She also depends on the support of registered independents — in some other key primary contests, they are not eligible to vote. Back in 2016, moderate candidates who went nowhere nationally — John Kasich, Christie and Jeb Bush — added up to 34% of the vote in New Hampshire. If you add the 11% held by Rubio, a mainstream conservative, that’s 45% of the vote that went for establishment candidates. In other words, this state is not representative of the Republican electorate.

But this time, the voters who backed those moderate Republicans will have a chance to coalesce behind a single candidate and, in doing so, deal a blow to Trump. The consequences may mostly prove to be symbolic: a rare Republican rebuke of Trump and a reminder that the old mainstream of the Republican Party remains to be reckoned with.

But there is a chance, albeit a small one, that a Haley win in New Hampshire would prove to be more important. Trump may face criminal trials in the months ahead. While it seems exceedingly unlikely today, an erosion of his aura of dominance might make him ever so slightly more vulnerable if a trial gets underway.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.