It’s a two-person race now.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has dropped out of the race for the GOP nomination, leaving Donald Trump and Nikki Haley to duke it out in New Hampshire this week. Here’s more on how DeSantis’ campaign crumbled and a look at the head-to-head matchup in the Granite State.
Ron DeSantis Suspends Campaign
DeSantis was once thought to have a serious shot at dethroning Trump, but by the time he launched his campaign, his popularity began to diminish. The media seized on his awkwardness and became fixated on his footwear. And internally, turmoil and infighting rocked his campaign and the pro-DeSantis super PAC, Never Back Down, which had amassed a war chest of $130 million last summer.
DeSantis and his advisers also seemed to misread the MAGA base, positioning the Florida governor as a hard-right alternative without Trump’s baggage (i.e. his 91 felony counts and his possible exclusion from the Colorado ballot). But Trump’s supporters are proving loyal. That was certainly the case in Iowa, where Trump won a record-breaking 51 percent of the vote, beating DeSantis — who campaigned in all of the state’s 99 counties — by 30 percentage points.
Facing a primary in New Hampshire, where he’s polling in the single digits, DeSantis on Sunday finally threw in the towel.
“If there was anything I could do to produce a favorable outcome — more campaign stops, more interviews — I would do it,” DeSantis said in a video message posted to X. “But I can’t ask our supporters to volunteer their time and donate their resources if we don’t have a clear path to victory.”
In the same video, DeSantis endorsed Trump, saying that the party “can’t go back to the old Republican guard of yesteryear. A repackaged form of warmed-over corporatism that Nikki Haley represents.”
Trump on Sunday told Fox News Digital that he’s “very honored” to have the endorsement.
A two-person race
Trump is polling pretty far ahead of Haley in New Hampshire. In the latest CNN/University of New Hampshire survey, Trump stands at 50 percent of the vote with Haley at 39 percent, while a Suffolk University/Boston Globe/WBTS poll puts Trump at 55 percent and Haley at 36 percent.
DeSantis’ departure likely only strengthens Trump’s position. A 538 analysis of national GOP primary polls found that Trump was the second choice for nearly half of DeSantis voters; Haley was the second choice for just 27 percent of DeSantis supporters.
New Hampshire Republican strategist Mike Dennehy told the Wall Street Journal that with DeSantis out of the picture, it’s “virtually impossible for Nikki Haley to keep Trump under 50 percent.”
Still, Haley’s holding out hope that she’ll be able to win over enough of New Hampshire’s independents to pull off an upset. Around 40 percent of the state’s voters are unaffiliated, but wooing them without turning off voters who sit further right, won’t be easy.
“It’s a very difficult needle to thread,” Nathan Shrader, an associate professor of politics at New England College told the Associated Press.
