Hoping to defeat Trump, Republican candidates like Haley and DeSantis are focusing their efforts in the final weeks before the first primary rounds take place.
President Joe Biden is enjoying a year-end vacation in the US Virgin Islands, ahead of a year that will determine whether he will join the one-term presidential club. Meanwhile, Republican candidates are in the final stretch of the primary election cycle to choose their party's nominee for the 2024 White House.
After a short Christmas break, former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis are back on the campaign trail, holding events in Iowa and New Hampshire, the opening states of the US election year.
Iowa is scheduled to hold its Republican caucuses on January 15. The first-ever Republican primary in the nation will be held in New Hampshire a week later.
Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley speaks at a campaign event in Iowa on February 20. Photo: Reuters
Rising support in recent polls and donor enthusiasm have opened the door to hope for Ms. Haley to become the most trusted candidate in the state of New Hampshire.
However, CNN analyst Stephen Collinson said that with former President Donald Trump still dominating the Republican race, Ms. Haley needs to find a way to make voters turn their backs on Mr. Trump if she doesn't want to be just second in the race.
The former US ambassador is adopting a strategy of indirectly criticizing Mr. Trump as an agent of chaos in the US. She does not exploit the criminal trials targeting the former president or the effort to overturn the 2020 election. Haley does not directly attack the former president so as not to alienate many of his Republican supporters.
"Even if that tactic works in New Hampshire, she will still face a big challenge in her home state of South Carolina in the primary election late next month, where Mr. Trump is very popular," Collinson warned.
In the coming days, Ms. Haley is expected to make several appearances with New Hampshire Governor Chris Sunun, who endorsed her and has long argued that the state’s primary will shape the Republican race, marking the beginning of Mr. Trump’s eclipse.
Haley is closing the gap with Trump in New Hampshire. A Saint Anselm College poll in New Hampshire found that 30 percent of Republicans supported Haley, compared to 14 percent for Trump. That’s double the number Haley had in a poll three months ago. That 14 percent is also the smallest margin of support for any candidate in the state.
Observers say Haley's recent surge in polls is largely driven by wealthy suburban intellectuals who have grown tired of Trump's harsh rhetoric and legal troubles.
If the former South Carolina governor wants to move forward and have a chance of defeating Mr Trump in the Republican nomination, she will have to appeal to more rural, middle-class and working-class voters, according to pollsters.
Before the Iowa caucuses began on January 15, Haley also campaigned in areas that supported Trump in the state, including very conservative areas.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, on December 6. Photo: AFP
Governor Ron DeSantis was once considered a formidable opponent of Mr. Trump. However, Mr. DeSantis had a rather difficult 2023 with a somewhat clumsy and ineffective campaign.
DeSantis plans to focus his efforts on Iowa over the next two and a half weeks. DeSantis, who has visited all 99 of Iowa’s counties, will begin a statewide campaign this week with events in Ankeny and Marion. He will then appear with Gov. Kim Reynolds, who has endorsed him, in Clayton County, in eastern Iowa.
An Iowa poll in early December showed DeSantis trailing Trump by 32 percentage points. The poll found that 51% of likely Republican caucus voters said Trump was their top pick among seven potential candidates, while 19% picked DeSantis and 16% picked Haley.
Businessman Vivek Ramaswamy got 5% support, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie got 4%, while all the others got 1% or less.
Former US President Trump at a campaign rally in New Hampshire on December 16. Photo: AFP
In both early primary states, polls in recent months have shown Mr Trump to remain the front-runner.
Trump's strong support among Republican voters, his influence among Republican lawmakers and his opponents' reluctance to publicly oppose him suggest the former president's position within the party remains strong.
Trump is waging an unprecedented 2024 campaign that has been dogged by legal troubles. The former president has spent much of the holiday season complaining about special counsel Jack Smith, who is leading a federal investigation into alleged election meddling in 2020. His trial is scheduled for early March, just before Super Tuesday, when many states hold their primaries. But Trump is trying to push back the trial by arguing that he enjoys immunity from prosecution.
Observers say former President Trump could use the ruling that removed him from the Colorado ballot to motivate more Americans to stand by him. They say this is an opportunity for him to galvanize his supporters and gain sympathy within the Republican Party. Trump has repeatedly claimed that he is the victim of a "witch hunt" by the Democratic Party and the Biden administration.
"Never forget that our enemies want to take away my freedom, because I will never let them take away your freedom. I will not let them do that," he told a crowd of supporters in Waterloo, Iowa on the evening of December 19.
As the Republican primary race enters its final stretch and the former president remains firmly in the driver's seat, other potential candidates are stepping up their campaigns to find out whether they can beat Trump in next year's nomination race.
However, observers do not appreciate this possibility. "I don't think when you look at the current indicators, you can see a path for anyone other than Mr. Trump," said Kyle Kondik, an election analyst at the University of Virginia Center for Politics.
Thanh Tam (According to CNN, Reuters, WSJ, MSNBC )
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