Sununu says Haley can win New Hampshire but says goal is to "build on even more momentum"
From CNN’s Aaron Pellish
Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley is endorsed by New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu at a campaign town hall in Manchester, New Hampshire, on December 12. Brian Snyder/Reuters
New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu said he believes former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley can still win the New Hampshire Republican primary, but reiterated that she doesn’t “have to win” in order to gain momentum heading into future primary contests.
Sununu clarified his expectations for Haley’s performance in New Hampshire in an interview with NBC News on Sunday after initially forecasting a victory for Haley in the state shortly after he announced his endorsement of Haley last year.
Sununu touted the strength of Haley’s campaign, pointing to her gains in New Hampshire, the narrowing of the primary field and the relatively underwhelming poll numbers for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as evidence.
“The fact that she's knocked all the other candidates out, nobody thought that was possible, but she's really knocked everybody out. Even Ron, I mean, he's in it, but he's not really in it,” he said.
Sununu said it won’t be critical for Haley to win primary contests until the slate of Super Tuesday primaries in March.
11:18 a.m. ET, January 21, 2024
Doug Burgum contends Trump's attacks on Haley's heritage are "the norm for politics"
From CNN’s Avery Lotz
North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum speaks at an event in Des Moines, Iowa, on July 28. Rebecca S. Gratz for The Washington Post/Getty Images
North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, a former longshot GOP presidential candidate, characterized former President Donald Trump’s repeated attacks on Nikki Haley’s heritage as “the norm for politics” in a Sunday interview.
“Joe Biden launched his campaign a couple weeks ago with a set of personal attacks on President Trump,” Burgum said on ABC "This Week."
His defense of Trump comes as the former president used Nikki Haley’s birth name, “Nimarata,” in a post on his social media platform Truth Social (though he misspelled Nimarata as Nimrada) and disseminated false conspiracy theories that the former UN ambassador is ineligible from holding office because of her immigrant parents’ citizen status at the time of her birth in South Carolina.
Haley was born in Bamberg, South Carolina, and is a US citizen.
Burgum, who endorsed the former president on the eve of his decisive victory in the Iowa caucuses, initially dodged an inquiry about Trump’s attacks, saying, “All I know is that I believe the primary election is going to be over after Tuesday.”
Pushed by ABC’s Martha Raddatz to offer a reason for the former president’s rhetoric, Burgum said, “I think it’s politics.” He argued former Biden challengers – such as Vice President Harris – said “vicious things” about the president during national debates leading up to the 2020 election.
11:27 a.m. ET, January 21, 2024
Analysis: CNN political director breaks down CNN poll out of New Hampshire
Analysis from CNN's David Chalian
Former President Donald Trump, left, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and Florida Gov. Ron Desantis. Getty Images/CNN
If the New Hampshire primary results come in on Tuesday night looking like our final CNN/UNH poll results today, there is going to be one question hanging over the race for the Republican presidential nomination: Is it over?
Nikki Haley has said plainly that “the road is never going to stop." Ron DeSantis has indicated that he intends on competing for delegates at least through the month of March.
But it is hard to imagine how Haley and DeSantis continue to fund their campaigns at a competitive level, never mind convincing Republican voters and power brokers that there is a rationale to continue onward following back-to-back sizable Donald Trump victories in Iowa and New Hampshire, where the former president collects a majority of the votes and the delegates.
There has never been a non-incumbent Republican candidate for president who has won both Iowa and New Hampshire. In fact, in modern presidential campaign history, since the Iowa caucuses have served as the official kickoff followed by the New Hampshire primary, the two people who have won both contests outright were Democrats Al Gore and John Kerry, both of whom went on to become their party’s nominee.
In the new CNN/UNH poll, there is one finding that really pops out to me as a very telling element in this race: When we asked likely GOP primary voters for their overall opinion of the candidates, Donald Trump’s favorability rating is in a different stratosphere than his competitors.
Trump scores a 56% favorable rating from likely Republican primary voters compared to a 36% unfavorable rating. That is a net positive 20 points favorable advantage for the former president.
Haley and DeSantis are both underwater. More GOP primary voters have an unfavorable view of them than have a favorable view of them.
The relentless pounding of DeSantis by Trump and his allies for the better part of the last year and the more recent takedown of Haley by Trump and his allies in the last two to three months have had their intended effect in bringing up their negative ratings.
But the strategic decision by both DeSantis and Haley to only sharpen their criticism of Trump at the very end of these contests is also on display here.
The constant concern that taking on Trump directly would push away some of the very voters they were spending much of 2023 trying to attract has left Trump’s popularity with Republicans largely unscathed, if not improved.
Perhaps there was no way for any candidate to truly chip away at Trump’s incredible bond with the majority of Republican voters, but it is also clear that not attempting to do that for the entire year before voting began leaves these non-Trump candidates with very limited options for a path forward in this campaign.
11:19 a.m. ET, January 21, 2024
Biden campaign says election "not about age" despite concern from voters with Biden's mental acuity
From CNN’s Camila DeChalus
A top Biden campaign manager said Sunday this election is not “going to be about age” when asked about recent polling that suggests that President Joe Biden’s mental acuity is a big concern among voters.
Biden principal deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks told ABC’s “This Week” that Biden’s age has helped him bring “people together from both sides of the aisle to deliver results for the American people.”
“Our opponents are hammering that because they have no platform and nothing else to think about,” he said. “I'm sure it's much easier for them to talk about age than it is to talk about the fact that they want to rip away a woman's right to choose or take away reproductive freedom from a third of women across this country that are living under a national abortion ban because of Donald Trump.”
He continued: “This election is about freedom and democracy and the fact that Democrats under President Biden's leadership believe that people deserve more freedom, not less and Republicans want to roll that back and rip it away.”
It comes as the campaign is launching a full-court press this week to put abortion rights front and center in the 2024 race, including with events headlined by President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. The push marks the campaign’s first organized effort to emphasize the issue, seeking to further galvanize voters around reproductive rights in the first presidential election after the Supreme Court ended the federal constitutional right to an abortion.
The minutelong ad, titled “Forced” and shared first with CNN, features an emotional direct-to-camera testimonial from Dr. Austin Dennard, a Texas OB-GYN and mother who traveled out of her state, which has a strict abortion ban, to terminate her pregnancy after learning her fetus had a fatal condition. Dennard calls the situation “every woman’s worst nightmare” and criticizes Trump for the overturning of Roe v. Wade. The former president has taken credit for overturning Roe v. Wade due to the justices he appointed to the Supreme Court, recently saying in a Fox News town hall, “For 54 years they were trying to get Roe v. Wade terminated, and I did it. And I’m proud to have done it.”
“Two years ago, I became pregnant with a baby I desperately wanted," Dennard says in the ad. "At a routine ultrasound, I learned that the fetus would have a fatal condition and that there was absolutely no chance of survival.
“In Texas you are forced to carry that pregnancy, and that is because of Donald Trump overturning Roe v. Wade,” Dennard says as an image of Trump flashes across the screen. “The choice was completely taken away.”
Biden campaign officials hope stories like Dennard’s will resonate with voters heading into November’s election as the campaign looks to stress Trump and other Republicans have worked to limit reproductive rights. Democrats saw success around the issue of abortion in the 2022 midterms and other recent elections, which the Biden campaign hopes to replicate in 2024.
9:28 a.m. ET, January 21, 2024
CNN Poll: 63% of likely New Hampshire primary voters on Democratic side say they plan to write in Biden
From CNN's Jennifer Agiesta
About two-thirds, or 63%, of likely New Hampshire primary voters on the Democratic side say they plan to write in President Joe Biden on Tuesday's ballot.
Biden did not file to be a candidate on the state’s primary ballot because the primary is in violation of the Democratic National Committee’s rules for the nomination process, but supporters have mounted a write-in effort on his behalf.
Nearly all likely Democratic primary voters are aware of that effort; 91% said they had heard that Biden would not be on the ballot before taking the survey.
Minnesota Rep. Dean Phillips holds 10% support in the poll, matching his high mark in CNN/UNH polling on the race.
Author Marianne Williamson has 9% support, with 11% saying they would support someone else.
Nearly all Biden backers, 92%, say they have definitely decided to support him, compared with just 28% of those who are supporting another candidate.
Most in the Democratic primary electorate say they would be at least satisfied with Biden as their party’s nominee – 70% say they would be enthusiastic or satisfied – but enthusiasm for Biden among Democratic primary voters, which is at 31%, is lower than enthusiasm for Trump on the GOP side, which is at 46%.
CNN Poll: Trump’s lead over Haley widens to double digits in New Hampshire
From CNN's Jennifer Agiesta
The race for the New Hampshire Republican presidential primary appears to be former President Donald Trump’s to lose, according to a new CNN poll conducted by the University of New Hampshire following Trump’s 30-point win in Iowa’s caucuses last week.
Trump holds 50% support among likely Republican primary voters in the Granite State, while his closest competitor, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, stands at 39%.
Both have gained supporters since the last CNN/UNH poll in early January – when Trump held 39% to Haley’s 32% – as the field of major contenders has shrunk from six candidates to three.
Both Trump and Haley now hold their highest level of support in UNH polling on the race since 2021. But Haley’s sharp gains since late last summer have not been enough to catch Trump, as the gap between them has once again widened to double digits.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who led the race in UNH’s polling in early 2023 but has recently pulled back his efforts in the state, stands at just 6% in the poll, below the 10% minimum support he would need to win delegates there per the Republican Party’s rules.
For Trump’s opponents, New Hampshire has long appeared to be the place in the early primary calendar that offered the best shot at knocking him off track in his bid for a third straight GOP presidential nomination.
Haley questions Trump’s mental fitness after he appears to confuse her with Nancy Pelosi
From CNN's Ebony Davis
Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley, left, and former President Donald Trump. AP/Reuters
Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley on Saturday questioned Donald Trump’s mental fitness after he appeared to confuse her with former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi when talking about the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.
“Last night, Trump is at a rally and he’s going on and on mentioning me several times as to why I didn’t take security during the Capitol riots. Why I didn’t handle January 6 better. I wasn’t even in DC on January 6. I wasn’t in office then,” Haley said.
“They’re saying he got confused. That he was talking about something else. That he was talking about Nancy Pelosi. He mentioned me multiples times in that scenario,” the former South Carolina governor added.
Nancy Pelosi holds her final weekly press conference as Speaker of the House in Washington, DC, on December 22, 2022. Francis Chung/Politico/AP
Her comments come after Trump said at a campaign rally in New Hampshire: “By the way, they never report the crowd on January 6. You know, Nikki Haley, Nikki Haley, Nikki Haley … did you know they destroyed all of the information, all of the evidence, everything, deleted and destroyed all of it? All of it, because of lots of things, like Nikki Haley is in charge of security, we offered her 10,000 people, soldiers, national guards, whatever they want. They turned it down.”
Beyond confusing Haley with Pelosi, Trump’s contention that the speaker of the House is responsible for US Capitol security is not accurate, as CNN previously fact-checked.
“We need people at the top of their game,” Haley said in a Fox News interview Saturday. “I’m not saying that this is a Joe Biden situation, but I’m saying, are we really going to go and have two 80-year-olds running for president?”
Biden and New Hampshire Democrats have a lot riding on a low-key write-in campaign in the state
From CNN's Edward-Isaac Dovere
President Joe Biden speaks in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania, on January 5. Matt Rourke/AP
Joe Biden's supporters would prefer that he win Tuesday’s Democratic primary in New Hampshire. State Democratic leaders want that too. But the trick for everyone involved has been figuring out how to make that happen, since the president’s name doesn’t appear on the ballot.
That’s left the state’s Democratic establishment trying to spread the word about an unofficial campaign to write in Biden’s name — but not spread it so loudly that they risk embarrassing the president, and themselves, if someone else — like Minnesota Rep. Dean Phillips — wins.
Minnesota Rep. Dean Phillips speaks during a campaign event at Post & Beam Brewing in Peterborough, New Hampshire, on January 17. Joseph Prezioso/AFP/Getty Images
Biden did not register for the New Hampshire ballot following an internal party dispute over the date of the primary and the Democratic National Committee’s decision that the election effectively won’t count. Still, the fear is that not winning here would feed the narrative that he is weak heading into the general election. And state Democratic leaders want to avoid a win by a newcomer that could undermine their case to the DNC that their first-in-the-nation primary should be reinstated in 2028.
The deliberately low-key effort has so far been mostly about setting up signs, hosting Zoom calls and a few house parties, like one last weekend when a state representative’s 60th birthday party doubled as an organizing event. Hundreds of people have now trained on how to stand outside polling places on primary day and explain to voters how and why to write in Biden’s name.
