Is Nikki Haley's momentum enough? Here's how she's trying to break Donald Trump's grip in a crucial state.

MANCHESTER, N.H. — The thumping beat of “Eye of the Tiger” blared as former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley strutted out to cheers from a packed crowd at a ski lodge on Tuesday.

It was a familiar scene for the former ambassador to the United Nations. Since launching her 2024 presidential campaign in February, Haley has introduced herself to audiences of supporters hundreds of times – almost always with the Survivor hit playing in the background.

This time, however, Haley entered to the chorus with an extra boost. Moments before, New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu whipped the crowd into a frenzy with a high-energy speech endorsing Haley as his favored 2024 Republican.

“This isn’t just an aberration,” Sununu gushed about Haley’s mounting momentum in the first-in-the-nation primary state. “This is an opportunity for New Hampshire to lead the country, for New Hampshire to say we’re not looking in the rearview mirror anymore.”

Sununu, of course, was referring to former President Donald Trump. His hope is that the endorsement will help the former South Carolina governor whittle away at Trump’s mile-long lead in the race.

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Recent polls have shown Haley as the top GOP alternative to the ex-president in New Hampshire, and a solid showing in the state's upcoming primary could catapult her to success in other contests.

But the former governor now has less than six weeks to reach voters before they head to the polls. And like her go-to walk out song says, rising up to the challenge of beating her top rival will be a fight.

Haley’s odds in New Hampshire

Haley doesn’t necessarily need to win the New Hampshire primary to make progress against Trump. Rather, she needs to get close enough to his lead to alter the sticky narrative that he's the runaway favorite in the Republican race.

Getting there is a numbers game, said Andrew Smith, director of the University of New Hampshire Survey Center.

UNH and CNN’s most recent New Hampshire poll, conducted at the beginning of November, showed the former South Carolina governor with 20% support among likely voters in the state, compared to Trump’s 40%. A Real Clear Politics average of polls found Haley fairing slightly worse, with 18.7% to Trump’s 44.3% in the New England state.

However, Haley’s path to victory may only depend on her ability to garner support from an additional 10% of these voters, Smith said.

“If Haley gets above 30%, which I think is very doable, the key is going to be how that is interpreted – if that is a win for Haley or a win for Trump,” he explained. “If Trump doesn’t get over 50%, it shows he has serious competition in the party.”

Ben Bassi, a 65-year-old lifelong Republican from Hampton, New Hampshire, told USA TODAY he's leaning toward voting for Haley in the upcoming primary because of her pragmatic approach. While Bassi supported Trump in the 2016 and 2020 elections, he believes the former president is too divisive a figure.

“His policies are awesome. He's just too confrontational. And we've got to bring everybody together in this country,” the retired small business owner said, “I'd love to see her catch up to him. I know she can.”

In addition to Sununu’s endorsement, Haley last month also received the backing of Americans for Prosperity Action, a massive conservative political network founded by the Koch brothers. The group, including it’s New Hampshire affiliate, has put the full force of its resources behind the former governor.

Greg Moore, the New Hampshire state director of the group, told USA TODAY most voters his organization has spoken with while canvassing say they’re still undecided.  

“There's still a lot of opportunity to have these conversations, whether it be people who say they’re supporting President Trump or other candidates," Moore said.

The sentiment was echoed by other New Hampshire political figures without a specific stake in the race. GOP Party Chair Chris Ager, for instance, argued that most voters right now are more concerned about getting through the holiday season than politics, even as New Hampshire's primary approaches.

A comparative advantage

When comparing Haley’s chances in New Hampshire with the outlook in other early voting states, the picture becomes murkier.

A recent Des Moines Register/NBC News/Mediacom survey found Trump strengthening his overwhelming lead over other GOP candidates in Iowa. Over 50% of likely Republican caucusgoers in the midwestern state picked Trump as their first choice for president, up from 43% in an October survey. Haley is in third place behind Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

In comparison, the polling out of New Hampshire have stayed relatively stagnate. Trump only gained 1% support between September and November in the Granite State, compared to Haley’s 8-point rise in UNH/CNN surveys.

“I don't want to sugar coat it; Donald Trump is winning hands down in New Hampshire right now like he is everywhere else,” said Jim Merrill, a veteran GOP strategist. “But the margin here is a little bit more narrow than it is nationally or elsewhere.”

As of November, Haley was also trailing Trump by over 30 points in her home state of South Carolina, which is holding its primary just weeks after New Hampshire.

Merrill said he suspects the Haley campaign is banking, in part, that an upset in New Hampshire will shakeup how voters perceive the race in other states.

“We've seen more than once in New Hampshire that we have been the site of many surprises where a front runner gets toppled,” he said. “I think that's got to be what they're angling for – to get enough momentum out of New Hampshire to give her a fighting chance in South Carolina.”

Haley’s unifying message

One of biggest factors that could determine an upset in New Hampshire is the roughly 40% of undeclared voters in the state who don’t belong to either the Republican or Democratic Party. Though they're commonly referred to as “independents,” these voters aren’t necessarily nonpartisan.

 “The term undeclared, I think leads the average person to think that they are moderate,” Moore told USA TODAY. “I know many people who are registered undeclared but vote in every Republican primary. They can be just as much a conservative or libertarian, or whatever flavor you want.” 

A smaller group of this bloc are true moderates, and they tend not to vote frequently, Smith said.

Haley has already begun cobbling together a broad coalition of support from these groups of undeclared voters. According to the UNH/CNN survey, she was pulling roughly 25% of undeclared voters and 17% of registered Republicans in November.

Leslie Hess, a retired federal bureaucrat from Hebron, New Hampshire, is a member of a more unexpected group supporting Haley. A longtime Democrat, Hess decided to unregister from the party earlier this year to vote in the Republican primary. She views Haley as a candidate who can unify the country and would even support the former South Carolina governor over Biden if the two go head to head in 2024.

“She's not extreme on her issues. I think she has the ability to kind of bring two sides together,” Hess, who served 21 years in the military, said. “She's willing to have the hard discussions and talk about the hard issues and stand up and be accountable and responsible for things that have happened.”

To win in New Hampshire, however, Haley will also need to find a way to bring more Republicans into her fold. No one has ever won the New Hampshire primary without winning the plurality of their party’s registered voters.

At the moment, it remains unclear if she will be able to bring enough of those voters into her camp.

“I'm counting on Republicans to come out. If we get independents, if we get conservative Democrats, that's what a Republican Party should do,” Haley said after her Manchester town hall. “Our goal is to get as many people in the tent as possible.”