Nikki Haley is closing in on the top spot next to Trump

Nikki Haley is increasingly coming to be seen as the best alternative candidate to knock Donald Trump off his high horse as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis struggles to get the base of the Republican Party on his side against the former president. 

The former United Nations Ambassador performed well in the first primary debates and she received a bump in her polling numbers as a result of her attacks on political rookie Vivek Ramaswamy. However, Haley isn’t a surefire foil agaisnt Trump.

Ron DeSantis is still the leading second candidate in recent polling but he’s taken a big hit to his popularity since launching his campaign. The Florida Governor currently sits at 12.7% of the vote according to FiveThirtyEgiht’s October 16th average. 

DeSantis is down significantly from the 34.6% of the vote he enjoyed on January 8th. At that time the Flordia Governor was sitting at roughly 10 percentage points behind Trump and it looked like he had a real shot at dethroning the former president. 

Haley was still a relatively unknown factor at the beginning of the year and her polling at the time revealed that voters weren’t too sure what they should do with her. The former South Carolina Governor only had 2.6% of the vote back in January.

However, Haley has bumped that number up to 6.6% in FiveThirtyEight’s primary polling and she continues to be on the upswing. Haley’s numbers may not look like much to the casual political observer but they do reveal that she is well placed. 

RealClearPolitics has Haley in third place with 7.6% of the primary vote, which puts her within spitting distance of DeStanis, whom the polling data aggregator believes now has 12.9% of Republican voters on his side. But what accounts for Haley’s rise?

Republican strategist Ford O’Connell told The Hill that Haley’s bump in numbers is likely due more to DeSantis and his falling numbers, especially when it comes to “donors and Trump critics.” However, not all strategists agree with O’Connell’s assessment. 

New Hampshire-based political strategist Matthew Bartlett explained that Haley’s rise in his state was due to her personality and her campaign style, which has earned her a lot of support from voters in one of the country’s most politically divisive regions. 

Bartlett explained that the former South Carolina Governor’s political rise among voters in New Hampshire “has happened because she has campaigned incredibly tough in an incredibly authentic New Hampshire presidential way.” 

“She’s done over 50 town halls and events. She’s been meeting with voters. She’s really earned every step,” Bartlett continued, and it is that type of campaigning that could see Haley surpass DeSantis in the number two spot in the weeks and months to come. 

An October 11th Fox News Poll has put Haley within percentage points of DeSantis and his 13% voter support but this could mean little considering the poll also found that more than 80% of Republican voters were satisfied with the candidate they had chosen. 

Trump was leading the Republican primary nomination in the Fox News Poll by a giant margin with 59% of respondents saying that they wanted the former president back in the leadership seat to confront Joe Biden in November 2024. 

The numbers from Fox News match up will with aggregated data from FiveThirtyEight and RealClearPolitcs, which place Trump at 58.4% and 58.3% respectively. But does the former president view Haley as a threat with such a large lead? Some say yes. 

“Donald Trump absolutely views Nikki Haley as a threat,” one political analyst told The Hill. “One thing that is going to be a little bit interesting is to see how he goes after her and in what type of way.”

“There is a very long time before voters in Iowa will cast their ballots,” the analyst added. “No candidate is getting ready to be coronated. Nobody is getting ready to be out of the race.” 

Polling from earlier in October from Suffolk University, The Boston Globe, and USA Today showed Haley had 19% of the support from a group of Republican primary voters while Trump had 49% of support. It’s possible Haley could close that distance before the vote.