Can Nikki Haley actually beat Trump?

What’s happening

When the political arm of the powerful — and very deep-pocketed — Koch network formally endorsed Nikki Haley’s presidential campaign Tuesday, it reinforced the emerging consensus among close observers of the 2024 Republican primary contest.

Haley, a former South Carolina governor, is the only Donald Trump challenger with any real momentum — and perhaps any real chance, however slim, of toppling her party’s presumptive frontrunner.

The numbers don’t lie. On the back of three strong debate performances, Haley has more than doubled her support in national GOP primary surveys (from an average of about 4.5% to 10%), while the rest of Trump’s rivals have seen their support slip.

More importantly, Haley now polls second behind the former president in the initial primary states of New Hampshire and South Carolina, with about twice the backing of her next-closest competitor, and she has nearly caught up to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in the first-in-the-nation caucus state of Iowa, where he has staked the future of his campaign.

The comparison with DeSantis is telling. For much of 2023, the Floridian was the GOP’s leading Trump alternative; at one point, he was actually ahead of the former president in a head-to-head matchup.

But a series of stumbles — and a strategy that relied on peeling away Trump’s hard-core MAGA supporters rather than courting voters who opposed Trump or were at least open to someone else — has left DeSantis at just 13% nationally and hanging by a thread in the early states.

Big donors have noticed. In addition to the Koch network — which has raised more than $70 million for political races as of this summer and commands an extensive outreach operation — “a group of CEOs, hedge fund investors and corporate deal-makers from both parties have begun gravitating toward Haley,” according to the New York Times.

The question now is whether their investment could actually pay off.

Why there’s debate

To be clear, Trump is still clobbering the rest of the GOP field — Haley included. He is averaging about 59% nationally and about 45% to 49% across the early states. If the primary election were held today, he would win.

But the primary election won’t be held today — or, in fact, on any one day. Instead, it will be spread across a series of state-by-state contests that start Jan. 15, 2024, in Iowa, peak with Super Tuesday on March 5 and then continue through June — a period that will coincide with Trump facing 91 criminal charges across four separate jurisdictions.

The theory has been that Trump will breeze past a divided opposition the way he did in 2016 — but that if anti-Trump forces were to consolidate around a single challenger, and if events inside or outside the courtroom were to cooperate, then that challenger might have a shot.

The fact that Trump is still under 50% in the early primary states — and that even 41% of Trump supporters say they’d be open to supporting a more electable alternative — suggests that such a theory isn’t totally implausible.

Former Vice President Mike Pence and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott both ended their candidacies recently; the field is finally winnowing. But will that winnowing ultimately benefit Haley? Or is this all too little, too late?

What’s next

The fourth and final GOP primary debate, scheduled for Wednesday, Dec. 6, in Alabama, will give Haley one last opportunity to cement her status as this cycle’s strongest Trump alternative.

After that, there’s little more than a month until Iowa, where Haley’s super-PAC has spent $3.5 million on ads and other expenditures attacking DeSantis in hopes of striking a knockout blow — and where she has announced plans to spend millions more.