Independents could drive outcome
Encompassing 39% of state’s electorate, voters untethered to party seen as key for Haley
PORTSMOUTH, N.H. — Dawn Hartnett, 56, a registered independent who voted for Joe Biden in 2020, crammed into a country store last week to catch a glimpse of Nikki Haley. She has never voted for a Republican in a presidential election but will do so for the first time if Haley is the GOP nominee.
Hartnett believes Biden has done a good job as president but has cited concerns about his age and former President Donald Trump’s. In an interview in Hooksett last week, she described Haley as a candidate who can “bring us in to the next presidency, someone younger with some great ideas.”
Caroline Gagan, 60, is an independent voter with a very different view. A onetime Democratic supporter of Barack Obama, she plans to support Trump. The Hampton Beach resident who attended a Trump campaign event Saturday with Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., lamented that Democrats have “left us behind.”
Independent voters, who can cast a ballot in either party’s
primary, are seen as key to the outcome in Tuesday’s GOP contest. Those who don’t identify with a party now make up 39% of the overall electorate in New Hampshire — a bloc long viewed as key to Haley’s chances of springing an upset. But their political leanings are complex, ranging from Democratic-leaning anti-Trump voters to hard-right conservatives, and polling shows Haley’s edge among them narrowing in the final stage of the race, complicating her path to a competitive finish.
According to the latest Suffolk University/NBC-10/Boston Globe tracking poll of likely primary voters released Saturday, Haley
was pulling 45% support among unaffiliated voters with Trump at 44% support — a change from an earlier poll Jan. 18 where Haley was receiving the support of 53% of unaffiliated voters, compared to 32% for Trump. Trump, meanwhile, in the latest poll, trounced Haley among registered Republicans, receiving 59% of their support, compared to Haley’s 29%.
Some Haley allies have hoped to leverage the lack of a competitive Democratic primary by persuading independents who might otherwise vote in that race to join Haley’s cause in the GOP contest. Last week on the trail, Haley has stepped up her criticisms of
Trump, arguing the vast majority of American voters don’t want to see a Trump-Biden rematch, that it is time for a new generation to lead the Republican Party, and, in contrast to Trump, she would offer a steadier, less chaotic style of leadership.
Independents don’t vote as a monolith, and interviews with more than two dozen underscore the complexity of their views and how difficult it may be for Haley to draw out enough of them to win. Some share Trump’s isolationist tendencies, his hard line views on immigration and his antipathy toward the GOP establishment. Others are repelled by Trump’s harsh tone, his election denialism and the chaotic way he ran his administration.
Trump’s hard-line position on border security has appealed to some independents, and the state of the economy during his presidency has also drawn praise, interviews show. Haley’s calls for a new generation of leadership and moving past the chaos of Trump’s first presidency have enticed many others.
Trump aides argue that Haley would have to drive record turnout among independents to make up the gap, and they note that their analyses show that as many as 40% of the state’s undeclared voters don’t typically turn out in primaries, making the path to a victory even more difficult for Haley.