The magic of Dixville Notch ultimately didn’t happen Tuesday night. This small village in northern New Hampshire, located barely 30 kilometers from the Quebec border, traditionally votes at midnight on election day, and its handful of residents revealed the name of the winner of the Republican primary in a silent -fault between 1968 and 2012, thus predicting in the process who would win the party’s nomination for the November presidential election.
However, at 12:10 a.m. on January 23, the six registered voters gave their six votes to Nikki Haley, Donald Trump’s final rival in the race this year. “When I got up Tuesday morning, I said to myself: it’s done, she has just swept it in Dixville Notch, and she is also going to do it statewide,” summarized during the day of Tuesday Mary-Ann Donavan, Republican activist crossed in front of a polling station in Concord. “I hope with all my heart that this is what will happen. »
But the ex-president had already broken the spell in 2016, losing by two votes to three against former Ohio governor John R. Kasich, in this rural corner of the Granite State, and then winning the primary. And the New Hampshire surprise didn’t happen. The state’s Republican voters, although more independent-minded and more moderate in their conservatism, have in fact given in to the sirens of populism and vindictive and revanchist speeches by massively giving their votes to Donald Trump. The overwhelming favorite won more than 54% of the votes, 10 points ahead of the former United States ambassador to the United Nations.
A result which brings the ex-president dangerously close to a new face-to-face with Joe Biden and which strongly compromises the chances of the ex-governor of South Carolina to assert herself in the race as the candidate of reason, seeking to unify the party to better get it out of the chaos into which Donald Trump brought it, she affirms.
“It is now certain that Trump is the choice of the Republicans,” explains Steffen Schmidt, professor emeritus of political science at Iowa State University, in an interview. “He is a heavyweight who is advancing with far too much energy for the other candidates, and who is doing so this time with a very well-organized campaign machine. »
A machine capable of mobilizing his supporters to bring them to the polls and making them forget the strong images of the insurrection he led against the Capitol on January 6, 2021, to cancel the expression of the democratic vote in favor of Joe Biden in the last presidential election, whether the 91 charges against him in four separate criminal cases or his anti-democratic and authoritarian leanings.
“The dictator is not Donald Trump, it is Joe Biden, who seeks to silence an opponent by sending him to prison,” summarized last Friday Jim Cuthbert, a welder in the agri-food industry, who came to attend a political rally of the ousted president in Concord. “If the attacks against him come to nothing, it is because the accusations made against him are not based on any true information. »
And he added: “Joe Biden did not win the election. I am convinced of it. I have seen too many images on television of people tampering with ballot boxes. The evidence is clear. No one can argue with that if they have the slightest bit of an open mind. »
The Democrat won the 2020 presidential election, with a lead of more than 7 million votes in the popular vote. The accusations of electoral fraud still launched to this day by Donald Trump contradict the facts, as revealed by the judicial recounts carried out in several states, including those controlled by Republican majorities.
Always in the saddle
Far from throwing in the towel, Nikki Haley promised again on Wednesday that she would stay in the electoral race until the Republican convention next July. This is where the Republican candidate will be dubbed.
She continued her new attacks against the ex-president, whose mental abilities to lead the country she now questions after several confusing statements. During his campaign in New Hampshire on Saturday, he accused the former diplomat of having done nothing to ensure the security of the Capitol on January 6, confusing her with Nancy Pelosi, the leader of the American Congress at the time. .
A new television campaign from Nikki Haley also emphasizes the chaos that accompanies Donald Trump and sets the candidate on a new, conservative, reasoned path to get out of the impasses into which the ex-reality TV star has led the country, she says.
But the path remains complicated for the young 52-year-old politician, who, one month before the primary in South Carolina, her home state, and six weeks before Super Tuesday, when a large bloc of states will to decide on this inauguration, is still moving forward in this race lagging behind in the polls against Donald Trump. A framework, however, far from being immutable, due to the fact that far from Iowa and New Hampshire, the first stages of this campaign, the voters have not yet fully entered into these electoral concerns.
“The political class and the media would like to crown Donald Trump,” Nikki Haley’s campaign manager, Betsy Ankney, wrote Tuesday during the day in a note sent to journalists. “They say the race is over. After only 110,000 people voted in an Iowa caucus, they want to raise their hands, and say, “Well, I guess it’s Trump.” » To this number, 300,000 New Hampshire voters have just been added.
“That’s not how it works,” she added. About 50% of Republican primary voters want someone other than Donald Trump. Seventy-five percent of the country wants a choice other than Donald Trump and Joe Biden. And while members of Congress, the press, and several weak guys (a reference here to Ron DeSantis and Chris Christie’s withdrawals from the race) have given up and caved, we have no intention of leaving. »
Political scientist Dean Lacy, a public opinion specialist at Dartmouth University, believes that “even if she lost New Hampshire, Nikki Haley could decide to stay in the race as long as possible, in the hope to become the Republican candidate if Donald Trump ultimately could not be” for legal reasons. Or after having been found criminally responsible for his actions in one of the four trials which should soon open against him. For inciting insurrection. For illegal manipulation of secret documents. For trying to steal the election in Georgia.
A scenario that the Republican National Committee has not, however, considered, thus adding uncertainty to an electoral campaign which already does not lack unpredictability.
This report was financed thanks to the support of the Transat-International Journalism Fund.The duty.