Regardless of what happens in the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday, Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley’s campaign says she is sticking around until March 5, or Super Tuesday, when voters in Maine and 15 other states will cast their vote in their primary elections.
In a memo released Tuesday, Haley’s campaign argues that there is “significant fertile ground” in Super Tuesday states for the former South Carolina governor to scoop up independent and unaffiliated voters.
Eleven of the 16 Super Tuesday states have open or semi-open primaries, meaning “of the 874 delegates available on Super Tuesday, roughly two thirds are in states with open or semi-open primaries.” Those include Virginia, Texas, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, and Vermont — “all with favorable demographics” for the candidate, the campaign argues.
Maine has a hybrid primary system. If you are registered to vote with a particular party, you must vote in that party’s primary. However, if you are unaffiliated with any political party, you can choose which primary you wish to vote in. Maine uses a ranked-choice system in presidential primaries, though the Maine GOP has said it intends to nullify that option in the upcoming primary by ignoring any votes beyond the first choice.
It also remains uncertain whether Trump will appear on Maine’s primary ballot after the Maine Secretary of State determined him to be ineligible under the “insurrection clause” of the 14th Amendment for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol. That decision is pending until after the U.S. Supreme Court decides on a similar case out of Colorado. Maine’s military and overseas voters, whose ballots were mailed out on Jan. 20, will see his name regardless.
“After Super Tuesday, we will have a very good picture of where this race stands,” the Haley campaign memo reads. “At that point, millions of Americans in 26 states and territories will have voted.”
According to the final CNN/University of New Hampshire poll released Sunday, former President Donald Trump leads Haley by 11 percentage points, 50% to 39%, in the New Hampshire primary. While Haley holds a significant lead among undeclared or independent voters (58% to Trump’s 30%), that is not projected to be enough for a Haley victory because Trump holds a wider lead among registered Republicans. The poll was conducted before Ron DeSantis withdrew from the race; he polled at 6%.
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