What victory looks like for Nikki Haley and Dean Phillips

Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley poses for a selfie with a supporter during a campaign visit to T-Bones Restaurant in Concord, New Hampshire, on Jan. 22, 2024. | Jamie Kelter Davis for POLITICO

THE EXPECTATIONS GAME — As various competitive drivers would tell you, second place is the first loser. Or, in the words of fictional NASCAR driver Ricky Bobby, “if you ain’t first, you’re last.”

Two very different campaigns are attempting to prove that false in New Hampshire tonight. Former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley and Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.) both look on track to finish in second.

A victory by either would be a noteworthy achievement. A Haley win could change the trajectory of the GOP nomination fight, even if she remained a distinct underdog. A Phillips win wouldn’t really alter his chances — there are no Democratic delegates at stake and his ultimate chances of winning the nomination are close to zero — but it would amplify his message about Biden’s weakness and reflect poorly on the president.

But short of an outright victory, what does a strong night look like for each of these campaigns in New Hampshire? What kind of performance could reasonably be called something close to a win?

To some extent, the answer is shaped by the expectations game. In December, New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu raised the bar. “[Nikki Haley] is going to win in a landslide and that’s not an exaggeration,” he told ABC “This Week.”

A little over a month later, he’s doing his best to wrench that bar back down. “We always wanted to have a strong second. That’s the only expectation we ever laid out there,” he said to ABC’s “Nightline” on Wednesday.

The revisionist history reveals how Haley’s campaign wants to project victory.

As recently as mid-December, even as Sununu was predicting a landslide, Haley’s polling average in New Hampshire sat below 20 percent in a much more crowded field; today her average is slightly below 40 percent.

The problem for Haley is that as the field has consolidated, former President Donald Trump has seen a similar bump. And as it looked like she may have been inching closer earlier in January, polling now suggests Trump is on track to win by somewhere around 20 points this evening.

While the Republican ballot will feature 24 candidates — including all the Republicans who’ve dropped out recently — the bulk of the votes will go to Trump and Haley. While there’s no objective threshold for claiming a moral victory, Haley likely needs at least 40 percent to convincingly claim it was a good night in a state where independents can vote in the primary.

The demographics of the Haley vote will prove revealing. In a public memo today, campaign manager Betsy Ankney hinted at the Haley campaign’s strategy for a longshot victory: win primaries that allow independents or Democrats to vote in them. She highlights that South Carolina and Michigan, two early voting states, have open primaries, and that 11 of 16 Super Tuesday states have open or semi-open primaries.

The crosstabs of New Hampshire polling — and the Iowa results — suggest Haley needs independents to win. The latest Suffolk University/NBC-10/Boston Globe poll, though, had Haley and Trump in a statistical dead heat — 45 percent for Haley, 44 percent for Trump — among undeclared voters (that poll included Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis). That’s down from earlier in January, when Haley captured 53 percent to Trump’s 32 percent of undeclared voters from the same polling shop.

If Haley can’t outright win independents in New Hampshire, where she’s spent a whole lot of money and energy — and where Trump was crushed among independents in the 2020 general election, according to exit polls — tonight would qualify as a disaster, no matter what her campaign says in public.

Haley’s messaging ahead of the primary was designed to temper expectations — she told NBC News her goal is to be “stronger” than she was in Iowa, an almost assured outcome given that she finished third there and is now in a two person race. But if she can win independents by a sizable margin, her campaign will have an opportunity to claim there’s a narrow path to victory because of future open primaries. And if Haley can keep it close with Republican voters in New Hampshire as well, that would spell a tighter result than expected and a shockingly great night that opens the aperture on her future prospects.

On the Democratic side — where Phillips has accused the DNC of rigging the primary for President Joe Biden by keeping him off of ballots — the Minnesota congressman has also sought to lower expectations as the primary approached. A campaign adviser originally set 42 percent of the vote as an indicator of success. Since then, Phillips himself has ratcheted down the number — the 20 percent range “would be magnificent,” he said.

That’s a bit of an overstatement, especially since Joe Biden isn’t even on the ballot, (There is, however, an organized write-in campaign for the president.). To get a bounce out of New Hampshire, Phillips will likely need a showing that’s closer to the 30s or 40s, which begins to suggest a deeper level of unrest among Democrats and comes closer to matching Eugene McCarthy’s 42 percent performance in the 1968 New Hampshire primary against President Lyndon B. Johnson, the historic measuring stick that’s likely to be applied, fairly or not.

According to the New Hampshire secretary of state’s office, Democratic turnout is projected to be a paltry 88,000 voters, compared to a projected 322,000 on the other side. That small turnout is common for an uncompetitive primary, which doesn’t necessarily bode well for Phillips. But it also means he needs to convince fewer voters that the top of the Democratic ticket needs a change. Since the state’s Democratic primary this year is essentially a straw poll with no actual delegates at stake, true victory for Phillips may not necessarily be a number. Rather, it would be a series of post-primary news cycles that underscore the premise of his campaign — that Biden is not well-positioned to defeat Trump. What does defeat look like? The appearance of irrelevance or being written off as a vanity candidate after the first-in-the-nation primary.

Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at [email protected]. Or contact tonight’s author at [email protected] on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @calder_mchugh.

A message from Steuben County Industrial Development Agency:

President Biden, Buy America is not just policy, it’s real jobs in places like Hornell, part of Steuben County in upstate New York where we’re busy building America’s high-speed trains. We’re counting on your support to ensure that we retain hundreds of jobs and add new ones to build the new trainsets for Brightline West. Don’t allow a waiver to build trainsets overseas. Let’s build the trains and keep those jobs here in America.

— Pentagon says Ukrainian soldiers running out of ammunition without U.S. funds: Ukrainian soldiers on the front lines are running out of ammunition and other weapons needed to fight the Russian invaders, a Pentagon official said today, now that U.S. funding to support the war has lapsed. Since December, Washington has been unable to send urgently needed military aid to Ukraine at the same levels as the previous two years, Celeste Wallander, the Pentagon’s top official overseeing international security affairs, told reporters.

— Appeals court shoots down Trump’s bid to sideline his DC gag order: A federal appeals court in Washington, D.C. has rejected former President Donald Trump’s bid to lift a gag order that sharply restricts his ability to criticize witnesses in his criminal case for attempting to subvert the 2020 election. In a terse ruling today, the full 11-member bench of the appeals court — which includes three of Trump’s own appointees — opted against reconsidering a three-judge panel’s Dec. 8 decision upholding the gag order.

— Republicans rap DOD nominee over border, spy balloon: President Joe Biden’s pick to be the Air Force’s No. 2 civilian leader faced stiff criticism from Republicans on the Senate Armed Services Committee over her role on border policy and the incursion of a Chinese spy balloon. GOP senators devoted considerable time to questioning Melissa Dalton, who is now a top official in the Pentagon’s policy shop that oversees military support for border agencies, over her involvement in border issues.

NO LABELS NEW LAWSUIT — Two prominent No Labels donors sued the centrist political group today for pulling a “bait and switch” by preparing to back a possible third-party presidential bid in 2024, after soliciting donations to support “bipartisan activism,” POLITICO reports. No Labels “has lost its way, abandoned its original mission, and fundamentally betrayed its donors’ trust in the process,” the plaintiffs, Douglas and Jonathan Durst, allege in the lawsuit, filed with the New York State Supreme Court.

MEANWHILE, IN FLORIDA — Gov. Ron DeSantis’ former presidential campaign manager James Uthmeier will step back into his role as chief of staff next week, POLITICO reports. Uthmeier — who has been one of the Republican governor’s most trusted aides — confirmed that he will resume the job he held from October 2021 until August when he moved into the campaign manager role as part of a shakeup.

SHOUTED DOWN — President Joe Biden’s big rally today marking the anniversary of Roe v. Wade was thrown off track as protesters scattered throughout the crowd repeatedly interrupted his speech in protest of his handling of the Israel-Hamas war, POLITICO reports. The president attempted to muddle through his prepared remarks about the Republican Party’s plan to further restrict abortion access, but he was interrupted every few minutes. Protesters chanted “genocide Joe” as the crowd of Biden supporters tried drowning them out with chants of “four more years.”

A message from Steuben County Industrial Development Agency:

In 2015 there were 250 train manufacturing jobs at Alstom’s plant in Hornell, NY. Today, thanks to strong Buy America provisions there are nearly 700 men and women building high-speed trains. Today the Biden-Harris administration has a decision – keep supporting Buy America and creating more jobs in upstate New York and small towns across the country, or allow trains for Brightline West to be made in Germany. The choice should be clear. Buy America works for places like Steuben County but only when it is upheld consistently. Steuben County workers stand ready to build high-quality high-speed trains for Brightline West and deliver them in an ambitious timeframe to meet the goals of Brightline West and the nation. Let’s build America’s high-speed trains in America, not overseas.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (left) and Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson shake hands next to NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg prior to their meeting, on the eve of a NATO summit, in Vilnius on July 10, 2023. | Henrik Montgomery/TT NEWS AGENCY/AFP via Getty Images

ONE DOWN, ONE TO GO — The Turkish parliament today ratified Sweden’s bid to join NATO, with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan now expected to sign the accession, reports POLITICO EU.

Turkey’s move, which follows 20 months of diplomatic bargaining with Stockholm and Washington, leaves Hungary as the final NATO country still to proceed with Sweden’s bid to join the 31-member military alliance.

The ratification was adopted by the national assembly in a vote of 287 to 55.

Now the lone holdout is Hungary. Earlier today, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán reached out to Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson, asking him to come down to Budapest and negotiate about the NATO bid, an idea swiftly rejected by Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billström.

Sweden applied to join in May 2022, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine prompted the Scandinavian country to drop its traditional neutrality.

Hungarian officials have repeatedly reassured their Swedish counterparts that Budapest would not be the last to vote on Sweden’s bid to join the military alliance. After all, both are fellow members of the European Union — unlike outsider Turkey. Or so Sweden thought.

In recent months, Western diplomats and officials focused not on Orbán, but Erdoğan. The long-ruling Turkish leader, who slammed Stockholm’s lax treatment of critics against his ruling party, was considered to be the central figure in the resistance facing Sweden’s NATO application.

$1 million

The amount that Priorities USA, a super PAC supporting President Joe Biden’s reelection, is spending on its first-ever “creator” program, a campaign paying online influencers to create pro-Biden content. So far, the program has enlisted about 150 influencers.

AS FAR AS THE EYE CAN SEE — What would a total energy transition in the United States look like? One big part of it is solar energy — and the Bureau of Land Management has proposed using 22 million acres of public land solely for solar projects. That’s about the size of the entire state of Maine, though only about 700,000 acres will be needed to meet specific solar goals the Biden administration has laid out. In a piece that includes visualizations of the extent of land investment necessary, Oliver Millman reports on the proposed transition for The Guardian.

On this date in 1991: Some 150 men, women, children, veterans and hospital workers staged a flag-waving demonstration in front of the Nevada Capitol in Carson City supporting U.S. troops on duty in the Persian Gulf in the midst of the Gulf War. They were greeted by horn-honking responses from motorists. | Sal Veder/AP

Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here.