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MANCHESTER, N.H. — After Donald Trump’s blowout win in the Iowa caucuses, New Hampshire Republican Joe Mohler became more adamant about his support for Nikki Haley.
A student at the University of New Hampshire’s Franklin Pierce Law School, Mohler voted for former President Donald Trump twice, but he says he was “humiliated” by Trump’s denial of the 2020 election results and subsequent efforts to overturn them. He’s representative of a type of voter that could play a very important role in the state.
New Hampshire’s more suburban, less evangelically conservative Republican primary electorate gives Trump’s opponents a key opportunity to slow his momentum, along with the state’s rule allowing independent voters — voters registered as “undeclared” in New Hampshire — to participate in party primaries. Haley’s chances on Tuesday will rely on support from a unique coalition: Republicans open to a new party leader, those inside and outside the party turned off by Trump, and even Democratic-leaning voters who see Haley as a vessel to defeat Trump before the general election.
“I do not want see Donald Trump be the nominee for the Republican Party,” Mohler said, “and I was pretty much willing to vote for anybody that had a chance of beating him.”
Heading into Tuesday’s first-in-the-nation primary, multiple polls show the former president leading his former U.N. ambassador by double digits, though short of the 30-point margin by which he won the Iowa caucuses.
“I think she’s a strong candidate and also more moderate, without being divisive,” 22-year-old St. Anselm College senior Hannah Peterson told NBC News. Peterson voted for President Joe Biden in 2020, but is registered undeclared and called Haley “the lesser of two evils.”
“I think that she has a chance to beat Trump in our state at least,” she added, citing public polling. “And that might give her some more momentum nationally.”
From asking voters to turn the page on both Trump and Biden in one of her closing ads, to her escalated attacks on the campaign trail, Haley’s messaging has appealed to this unique mix of voters — even as she pushes against the “moderate” label on the trail.
“For all of those that are reporting that I’m a moderate,” Haley said while speaking to NBC News Friday, “name one thing that I wasn’t conservative on.”
But beyond Haley’s policy positions, she is benefiting from the fact that some Trump opponents view the New Hampshire primary as an opportunity to make their first stand against the former president, making more liberal-leaning voters willing to join Haley’s biggest supporters in the uphill battle.
“I’m going to vote for Nikki Haley to try to slow Trump’s momentum,” Andrea Guidoboni told NBC News. While Guidoboni has voted for Republican Gov. Chris Sununu, she has also backed Democratic presidential candidates for decades and has no plans to stop now — despite her planned Republican primary vote Tuesday.
“If she were to win over Trump, which is probably not that likely,” she said of Haley, “I would support Joe Biden over her. But I think we need to slow this person down.”
“Undeclared” voters like Guidoboni have the ability to play an outsized role in the state, making up nearly 40% of all registered voters in New Hampshire.
Independent voters have delivered upsets in New Hampshire before. Historically, these voters in New Hampshire’s Republican primary have helped usher in a different winner after Iowans chose someone generally viewed as further to the right. In 2000, John McCain won New Hampshire after George W. Bush won Iowa, and McCain won it again in 2008 after Mike Huckabee took Iowa. In 2012, Mitt Romney notched his first win on his way to the GOP nomination after Rick Santorum won the Iowa caucuses.
Trump has criticized New Hampshire’s political leaders for maintaining a semi-open primary, and he has made Haley’s crossover support a line of attack.
“Nikki Haley in particular is counting on the Democrats and liberals to infiltrate your Republican primary,” Trump told supporters at a rally in Atkinson, New Hampshire, last week.
The secretary of state’s office in New Hampshire says fewer than 4,000 Democratic voters changed their party affiliation in the month before the October deadline for voters to re-register to participate in the January primaries.
For context, a 4,000-vote swing in 2016 would’ve been the difference between third place and fifth place in the GOP presidential primary. New Hampshire Secretary of State David Scanlan predicted last week that approximately 322,000 people would vote in this year’s Republican primary.
There is at least one organized effort still targeting liberal-leaning undeclared voters. Primary Pivot, a super PAC, told NBC News it has spent more than $500,000 in recent weeks in a “Hail Mary” attempt to stop Trump.
“We have three rounds of mailers to 150,000 undeclared voters — mostly centrist or left-of-center — that have mainly voted in Democratic primaries,” Primary Pivot co-founder Robert Schwartz told NBC News.
The mailers call Haley “a different type of Republican” and tell prospective voters they have a “once-in-a-lifetime chance to help send Trump to defeat.”
The super PAC, which doesn’t have to disclose its donors before a Jan. 31 filing deadline, has also sent out five rounds of text messages and is using targeted social media ads to mobilize registered left-leaning undeclared voters who might otherwise stay home without a competitive Democratic primary.
“The main message is Donald Trump is a threat to democracy,” Schwartz told NBC News. “The only way you can stop him is by voting for Nikki Haley, as much as you might disagree with her.”
Mohler said he invites Democrats to vote in his party’s primary. “If they do it, and they vote for Nikki Haley, they vote for a candidate that Joe Biden’s more likely to lose to.”
“That tells me that they’re coming in with good intentions,” he concluded.
