The profile of the next United States presidential election campaign will become a lot clearer after the votes are counted in the New Hampshire Republican primary on Tuesday.
Polls show Nikki Haley will have to bridge a 19 per cent gap if she is to overcome Donald Trump in what may be the last decisive state battle to become Republican nominee on a weekend when the field was reduced to two.
Ron DeSantis spent the last hours of a wretched campaign enduring a final bout of humiliation from Mr Trump at a Saturday evening rally in Manchester, New Hampshire.
Mr Trump taunted his rival about the heeled-boots which became a source of amusement during his campaign. “I think he’s gone,” Mr Trump told his audience, pre-empting the official announcement which was made on Sunday morning. Mr DeSantis then followed the line of Tim Scott, the South Carolina senator who exited the field of Republican nominees in November, in giving his endorsement to Mr Trump.
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It was a dismal end to a campaign which, in the early running, had Mr DeSantis leading Mr Trump in polls and earning the nickname “DeFuture”. In stepping down, Mr DeSantis described Mr Trump as “superior to the incumbent, Joe Biden” and stressed that he would honour his pledge to support the Republican nominee.
“He has my endorsement because we can’t go back to the old Republican guard of yesteryear,” Mr DeSantis said on Sunday.
While hardly the warmest endorsement, it enhanced the overall sense of the Republican movement obediently falling into step behind Mr Trump’s sweep of Iowa and his commanding poll numbers as New Hampshire goes out to vote.
The latest poll from Suffolk University has Mr Trump surging to 55 per cent among voters with Ms Haley at 35 per cent.
In his first bid for the Republican nomination, in 2016, Mr Trump won 35 per cent of the New Hampshire vote in a crowded field: he returned four years later and was given an overwhelming 84 per cent mandate by Republicans when running against Bill Weld, a former governor of Massachusetts.
[ Keith Duggan: Haley makes biggest play in smallest settingOpens in new window ]
Mr DeSantis’s withdrawal made official Ms Haley’s repeated assertion that the Republican race was between two people. But it also emphasised the steepness of the hill she seeks to climb.
On Monday, Ms Haley concluded a characteristically busy campaign schedule with a series of public meetings across the state, ending with a rally in Nashua. In addition to the 35 per cent of Republican voters which polls indicate she has convinced, Haley is banking on persuading a surge of independent voters to close the gap.
“The momentum is there,” New Hampshire governor Chris Sununu told voters at a Haley rally on Sunday.
“The big ask, if you will, where it is all of our responsibility, it’s all about getting out to vote. People talk about Iowa: Trump won Iowa. 56,000 votes? Out of over three million people. Less than two per cent of the population of Iowa. Is that going to dictate the choice of the Republican Party for president? I don’t think so.
“This is where it is going to happen. We are going to have a record turnout. I’ve cashed a lot of political chips to get the weather just right on Tuesday. But that’s the big push: your friends, your neighbours, your co-workers, your weird uncles, your crazy cousins ... bring them all out.”
It was an upbeat message, but whether it penetrated the winter cold to cause the sensational result which Ms Haley believes can happen remains to be seen.
Most polls close at 7pm. The first indicator will come from the small town of Dixville Notch, where a small number of voters will show up at midnight: those results will be shared on the morning of primary day, with the broader picture becoming clear late on Tuesday night.
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