CNN town hall with Nikki Haley

Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley entered the Republican primary in February with a call for “generational change.” But her message has largely been drowned out by former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Haley’s early poll numbers among Republicans have been meek. Like so many others now flooding the race, she tends to slot in with single-digit support, laps behind Trump and DeSantis.

A moderate, at least in the context of the current Republican Party, Haley is trying to form a coalition of the GOP’s anti-Trump and Trump-fatigued voters, along with a chunk of the former president’s conservative base.

At a live CNN town hall in Iowa tonight, Haley will have her clearest opportunity yet to make that pitch. Here are four things to watch for:

Read more here.

Do you know who is polling third in the 2024 Republican race for president? That may feel like an odd question given that the two leading candidates, former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, are the only ones averaging over 5% nationally.

The answer, though, is former Vice President Mike Pence and former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, both tied at just 4%.

More worrisome for Haley, who is taking part in a CNN town hall Sunday evening, and other candidates polling outside the top two is the seeming nationalization of the GOP primary process this year. We’re seeing that reflected in state polling, including in the early voting and declared candidates’ home states: All largely show a significant advantage for Trump.

Presidential primaries, unlike general elections, don’t occur on the same day. They’re sequential, with outsize importance given to the states that vote first. This is why you see Republican candidates flocking to Iowa (for its caucuses) and New Hampshire (for the first-in-the-nation primary).

In recent years, national polling leaders at this point in the primary season who would go on to lose their party nominations did so in part because they lost the Iowa caucuses. That happened to the two candidates with the largest national leads: Republican Rudy Giuliani and Democrat Hillary Clinton, each in 2008.

Both were clearly in trouble in Iowa at this point in the cycle. In fact, neither led their side’s contests in Des Moines Register polling from May 2007.

2024 race goes national: This year, we’re not seeing such a disconnect between national and early-state polling – at least not yet. The top two candidates in Iowa and New Hampshire surveys released to the public have been Trump and DeSantis. A University of New Hampshire poll taken in mid-April, for example, had Trump at 42% and DeSantis at 22%. New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, who is expected to announce his 2024 plans this week, was in third place at 12%.

Let’s focus closer on that Sununu datapoint. A few years ago, I noted that one of the better ways to predict whether a candidate trailing in national and early-state polls could surprise people is by examining how they were doing in their home states.

Read the full analysis here.

The entire field of 2024 Republican candidates and likely contenders – minus the front-runner – descended on Iowa on Saturday for a fundraiser for veterans that featured a motorcycle ride and a barbecue as they mingled with politically plugged-in voters in the first state on the GOP nominating calendar.

Former Vice President Mike Pence, in a leather vest, rode on a motorcycle as he and Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst, the host of the annual “Roast and Ride” gathering, led hundreds of riders to the Iowa State Fairgrounds in Des Moines.

Retail politicking was in full swing at the fairgrounds. Florida first lady Casey DeSantis, the wife of newly declared 2024 candidate Ron DeSantis, climbed up on a tractor with two of their children after signing hats and taking photos with voters.

Former President Donald Trump was notably absent from the event, which came two days after he held several campaign events in the state and participated in a Fox News town hall with Iowa voters. But all other leading candidates – including DeSantis, former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott and former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson – made public appeals for support.

Haley, who will be participating in a CNN town hall in Iowa on Sunday night, spoke of the importance of the state caucuses on the primary calendar.

Haley’s husband, Michael Haley, was at the Roast and Ride event ahead of his scheduled deployment to Africa in the coming weeks with the South Carolina Army National Guard.

The presence of nearly all of the 2024 GOP contenders at Ernst’s eighth annual Roast and Ride event is a demonstration of her influence within the party – both in Washington, where she is Republicans’ fourth-highest-ranking senator, and in Iowa, where a strong performance in the caucuses is a crucial momentum-builder for presidential hopefuls.

Keep reading here.

CNN anchor and chief Washington correspondent Jake Tapper will moderate a CNN town hall tonight with Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley as the field of hopefuls vying for the party’s 2024 nomination continues to grow.

The event will begin at 8 p.m. ET and take place at Grand View University in Des Moines, Iowa.

The former South Carolina governor, who also served as the US ambassador to the United Nations under President Donald Trump, is expected to take questions from Tapper and a live audience comprised of Iowa Republicans and voters who say they will preregister to participate in the Republican caucuses by the deadline set by the Iowa GOP and pledge to appear in person at the caucuses.

The town hall will stream live for pay TV subscribers via CNN.com. You can also watch on CNN OTT and mobile apps under “TV Channels,” or via CNNgo where available. The town hall will also be available on demand to pay TV subscribers via CNN.com, CNN apps and cable operator platforms.

Haley entered the GOP nominating contest in February and has had to navigate running against her former boss, who is seen as the current Republican front-runner. The first woman elected governor of South Carolina, Haley has struggled to break through in GOP primary polling this year with Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis drawing the lion’s share of support among Republican voters.

The event will be the second in CNN’s series of Republican presidential town halls for the 2024 cycle. The first, moderated by Kaitlan Collins, featured former President Donald Trump in New Hampshire.

The first presidential primary debate will take place on August 23 in Milwaukee, the Republican National Committee announced Friday. The party also laid out the polling and donor thresholds candidates must meet to make the stage.

For the polling requirement, candidates will need to register at least 1% in three national polls, or a combination of national polls and a poll from the early-voting states recognized by the RNC.

Qualifying candidates will also need “a minimum of 40,000 unique donors to candidate’s principal presidential campaign committee (or exploratory committee), with at least 200 unique donors per state or territory in 20+ states and/or territories,” the RNC said in a statement.

The candidates must also sign a pledge “agreeing to support the eventual party nominee,” the committee said.

Candidates must present these qualifications to the RNC 48 hours before the first debate. The committee also said that “should enough candidates qualify to make it necessary,” a second debate will be held on August 24.

The rules are more stringent than what Democrats required during the 2020 cycle to qualify for their first presidential debate, when candidates had to either register at least 1% in support in three polls from an approved list of pollsters or receive campaign contributions from 65,000 unique donors, including 200 donors each from 20 different states.

The Republican requirement for 2024 candidates to meet both the polling and donor threshold could make qualifying difficult for some hopefuls who are struggling to garner 1% in polls or in fundraising.

The first Republican primary debate won’t occur until August — and the first primaries and caucuses won’t happen until early next year — but the 2024 presidential primary campaign is already well underway.

Here are the currently declared Republican presidential candidates, sorted by their place in the most recent CNN poll of the potential GOP primary electorate.

Donald Trump

Ron DeSantis

Nikki Haley

Tim Scott

Vivek Ramaswamy

Asa Hutchison

Larry Elder

More to come: There are other Republicans considering campaigns. Former Vice President Mike Pence, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum also register in the single digits in CNN’s most recent poll.

A former president of the National Association of Women Business Owners, Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley was first elected to the South Carolina House of Representatives in 2004.

Six years later, she became the first woman elected as governor of the state in 2010 and was the youngest governor in the nation when she took office in 2011.

She resigned in the middle of her second term to become former President Donald Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations – a role she served in until the end of 2018.

Haley has often attempted to walk a fine line between allying with Trump and distancing herself enough to appeal to his more moderate critics.

She left the Trump administration in 2018 on good terms with the then-president – a marked contrast from other former Trump officials who have publicly fallen out with their onetime boss.

During her video campaign announcement in February, Haley touted her record as a twice-elected governor of South Carolina and her leadership in the state after nine people were fatally shot at a historically Black church in Charleston in 2015. After the shooting, Haley called for the removal of the Confederate flag from the grounds of the Statehouse.

She also leaned into her foreign policy experience in her announcement and referenced her time as UN ambassador.

“Some people look at America and see vulnerability,” Haley said. “The socialist left sees an opportunity to rewrite history. China and Russia are on the march. They all think we can be bullied, kicked around. You should know this about me: I don’t put up with bullies, and when you kick back, it hurts them more if you’re wearing heels.”

Former South Carolina Republican Gov. Nikki Haley announced in a video in February that she was running for president in 2024, becoming at that moment the first major rival to challenge former President Donald Trump for the GOP nomination.

Haley served as US ambassador to the United Nations under Trump. The former president, who announced his bid last year, appeared to bless her entrance into the race, telling reporters that she had called to tell him she was considering a campaign launch and that he had said, “You should do it.”

Haley, the daughter of Indian immigrants, opened the video talking about how she felt “different” growing up in Bamberg, South Carolina.

“The railroad tracks divided the town by race. I was the proud daughter of Indian immigrants. Not Black, not White. I was different. But my mom would always say your job is not to focus on the differences but the similarities. And my parents reminded me and my siblings every day how blessed we were to live in America,” Haley said.

If successful in the primary, Haley would be the first woman and the first Asian American nominated by the Republican Party for president.

During her video announcement, Haley discussed her work as the twice-elected governor of South Carolina and leaned into her foreign policy experience, referencing her time as UN ambassador, saying she has “seen evil.”

Read more about her campaign launch here.