Finally, Nikki Haley faces Donald Trump alone in New Hampshire.

“There were fourteen of us running at one point in this campaign,” she claims in a fundraising email that was distributed soon after the DeSantis scandal surfaced.

“But today, it’s officially a two-person race between me and Donald Trump!”

But it’s possible that Ms. Haley’s confrontation with Mr. Trump in the state-by-state race to select the Republican nominee for president won’t go quite as planned. The former president has largely benefited from the way the 14-person field has shrunk recently.

First, Ms. Haley was denied any significant momentum ahead of Tuesday’s vote in New Hampshire when Mr. DeSantis defeated her for second place in the Iowa caucuses.

Vivek Ramaswamy, another presidential contender, withdrew from the contest and endorsed Mr. Trump the day after Mr. Trump’s historic victory in Iowa, bringing him additional media attention.

Additionally, Mr. DeSantis is no longer involved. He has backed Mr. Trump, just like Mr. Ramaswamy, albeit a little less enthusiastically. The majority of the Florida governor’s fervor was directed against Ms. Haley, and not in a positive way.

His words “the old Republican guard of yesteryear – a repackaged form of warmed-over corporatism” applied to the previous US ambassador to the UN. The focal point of Mr. Trump’s criticism on his former Cabinet member over the past few days has been this line of attack: Haley the globalist who loves the establishment.

The DeSantis campaign needed six days to go through the phases of political mourning and come to terms with reality. However, his choice of when and how to withdraw may have contributed to Mr. Trump’s triumph.

The vast majority of voters who support Mr. DeSantis, according to public opinion surveys, see Mr. Trump as the best alternative, implying that the former president will benefit from his withdrawal.

In an earlier Sunday CNN/University of New Hampshire poll, for example, 62% of voters in the state who supported Mr. DeSantis listed Mr. Trump as their second choice, while only 30% selected Ms. Haley.

These aren’t terrific odds for the former governor of South Carolina, who has been concentrating on New Hampshire for months in the hopes of giving her campaign the momentum it needs to take on Mr. Trump.

She had a great strategy in theory. Both party members and independent voters may participate in the state’s Republican primary, giving moderates who disagree with Mr. Trump’s style of conservative populism a voice. Additionally, 37% of the state’s population is college graduate, one of Ms. Haley’s strongest demographics.

In recent months, she has gained more support in the state as the obvious choice for those who do not favor the former president. She undoubtedly offers the people skills that DeSantis lacks, and she has also taken a different route than the former governor of Florida, who positioned himself on Mr. Trump’s right.

Her candidacy has been compared to a Republican Party that existed prior to Trump in terms of both tone and policies. Her message is more moderate, and she has mostly avoided conspiracy theories and grievance politics. She also favors the US continuing to subsidize the war in Ukraine.

Still, it might not be sufficient to simply stop being Trump and convey a more moderate message.

It is hard to see where she might win if she doesn’t defeat him in New Hampshire, not even in her native state of South Carolina, where the former president enjoys enormous popularity and the backing of nearly every other state Republican figure.

Republicans who oppose Trump have long lamented that while the majority of the party did not want to see him as the nominee once more, the opposition was just too split to oppose him. It was argued that victory would be attainable if they could just come together in support of one candidate.

This coming Tuesday in New Hampshire, the theory will finally be tested.