How voters try to stop Trump in his tracks

– New Hampshire voter Jan Dodge says she will vote for Nikki Haley in the state’s Republican primary – but supporting the former South Carolina governor is not the main motivation behind her choice.

“I’m not a real supporter of Haley. But I don’t want Donald Trump to win New Hampshire. So I’m voting for Haley,” the 71-yearold retiree says.

Her friend Lisa Kester, a 59-year-old attorney, says it’s a strategic vote. “It’s a vote against Donald Trump.”

Voters plotting ways to block the former US president from November’s

ballot are lining up behind Haley as their best weapon against a second Trump term and planning to cast their primary ballot for her on Tuesday.

Dodge and Kester came to the iconic general store Robie’s Country Store on the banks of the Merrimack river to listen to Haley.

With its red clapboard siding, Robie’s has been a regular stop on the New Hampshire campaign trail for decades.

In 1975, Jimmy Carter stopped by and was greeted by the owner with “Jimmy who?”.

Trump, says Dodge, was “horrible for four years”.

“And he would be even more horrible” should he take back the White House in his likely rematch with Democrat Joe Biden later this year, she adds.

She is a registered independent and ballot clerk and found offensive Trump’s “lies” about the 2020 vote, which he lost to Biden and for which he is now facing a criminal indictment for election interference.

Though difficult to quantify, the rejection of Trump was a recurrent theme among independents – allowed to vote in Republican or Democratic primaries in New Hampshire.

New Hampshire’s voters are famous for adhering to their state motto “Live Free Or Die” and remaining independent, a granite bloc that Haley has been chasing in her struggle to reel in Trump.

She remains a long way behind the frontrunner after his landslide victory in Iowa.

“In New Hampshire, we’re trying to figure out how to vote so that Trump isn’t the Republican candidate,” says 43-year-old social worker Emily McCarthy.

She was committed to “the right to do what you want with your body” – an allusion to conservative attacks on abortion. –