If Tuesday’s Republican primary in New Hampshire goes for Nikki Haley or not, her campaign will need record turnout to keep her alive.
After suffering a huge loss in Iowa, anything short of a win would allow Donald Trump to maintain the momentum toward the Republican presidential nomination.
There is a mathematical path. If Haley wants to claim victory in New Hampshire, she will need the state’s “black” or independent voters to turn out in record numbers, pushing turnout above 900,000 people, the Daily Mail pollster said.
But that number is three times more than forecasters predict will go to the polls.
And it’s far more than the 287,000 people who participated in the last competitive Republican primary in 2016.
Daily Mail pollster JL Partners has modeled three different scenarios with different numbers of undeclared voters participating in Tuesday’s primaries. A low percentage of blacks shows that Nikki Haley is losing badly to Donald Trump. But if the ratio of Republicans to blacks is 50:50, Nikki Haley could come within four points of the frontrunner
Our survey was conducted before Ron DeSantis quit Sunday afternoon. It pits Nikki Haley and Donald Trump against each other in the first primaries in New Hampshire
Still, Haley campaign groups are making a last-minute effort to convince their people to leave on Tuesday. They hope good weather and a last hectic day of storms during the campaign will help them.
James Johnson, co-founder of JL Partners, spent the past week crunching the numbers for DailyMail.com.
Our poll, released Tuesday morning, shows Trump is on his way to victory. He leads Haley to 37 with 57 points.
But that also includes all kinds of assumptions and predictions about who will vote.
“The main known unknown for this primary is the turnout of undeclared voters – those who are registered without party affiliation,” Johnson said.
“Our polls suggest a mirror-image contest, with Trump 38 points ahead among registered voters as Republicans and Haley 10 points ahead among blacks.
“But the turnout of undeclared voters has a high degree of uncertainty. Our headline figures are based on an estimated split of 62 percent Republicans to 38 percent blacks, based on an initial exploratory survey of 600 voters in New Hampshire.
“But that share of blacks has been consistently lower in the past, reaching 45% in 2012, but falling to 36% in 2016, according to exit polls.”
There are reasons why that split could be an underestimate. This time, unlike 2016, there is not really a Democratic primary.
Nikki Haley’s future in the race for the White House hangs in the balance as the latest DailyMail.com poll in New Hampshire shows Donald Trump 20 points ahead in the primaries
Joe Biden has the race all but tied up, and due to complicated intraparty maneuvering, his name won’t even be on the ballot Tuesday.
Since there isn’t much to contest in the Democratic primaries, more blacks than usual could choose to participate in the Republican primaries.
If the ratio shifts to a 50:50 split, Haley closes the gap to 14 points.
“Nikki Haley hopes that the combination of an uncompetitive Democratic primary with the divisive nature of Donald Trump will lead to an increase in black turnout,” Johnson said.
‘However, our models suggest that this wave should be really huge.’
To get the number to a Haley victory, the share of blacks in the mix must exceed 75 percent for a turnout of 975,787.
“The Foreign Secretary suggests that there are only 344,335 people registered as black and white,” Johnson said. “There is no path to victory for Nikki Haley.”
Haley made one last whirlwind tour of the state on Monday. Here she is seen holding 16-month-old Arthur Colette during a campaign stop at T-Bones in Concord
But that doesn’t mean Haley’s supporters have given up. Other forecasters have different models and closer poll numbers.
Robert Schwarz of Primary Pivot, which works to increase the number of unreported voters, said he believed the share could rise above 44 percent.
‘Our estimates are that if the turnout is above 300,000, Nikki probably has a chance of getting within 10 percent and if it is, what the Secretary of State says, 320,000 or more, then it could be a close battle become,” he said.
Voters in New Hampshire often arrive late, Republican strategist Jim Merrill said during a Bloomberg roundtable, and Haley struck hard with her closing message.
“What I see as a voter in Ward 1 in Manchester is a campaign that has been reaching persuadable households by post for months,” he said. “No other campaign has done that, maybe one or two from Ramaswamy, one or two from DeSantis, a few from Trump.”