As rivals drop out, could Donald Trump seal Republican nomination on Tuesday?
CBC
The final visible flicker of resistance to Donald Trump in the Republican Party consists of little crowds like one in a high school library in the town of Derry, N.H.
People gathered over the weekend to hear Nikki Haley from an atypical cross-partisan coalition: Democrats, Independents and Republicans, all voting in Tuesday's New Hampshire primary.
She's the last person standing against Trump in the Republican presidential race after Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor, quit Sunday and endorsed Trump.
It could be the de-facto end of the Republican race if Haley, a former United Nations ambassador and South Carolina governor, loses the New Hampshire primary to her former boss, Trump.
This is the closest thing to a state tailor-made for Haley: it has relatively moderate Republicans and loose rules allowing anyone to participate. Independents can vote here, as can Democrats if they registered in time.
If she can't beat Trump here, his allies will argue, she can't beat him anywhere, and pressure will mount for her to step aside and let the former president start fighting the general election.
A political science professor from a nearby college in Massachusetts, who came to hear Haley in Derry on Sunday, described this primary as a chance to delay Trump's triumph.
"I'm hoping she'll slow [Trump] down, perhaps overtake him, put him in his place, if you will," said Rich Padova, an Independent who has mostly voted for Democrats in presidential elections.
Otherwise, if she loses badly on Tuesday, he said, "It could be the death knell."
Polls show Haley trailing Trump by a dozen points or more in New Hampshire, although it's hard to predict exactly how many non-Republicans might show up.
One Democrat elsewhere in the state said she's heard from a number of non-Republicans planning to vote in the primary in this unusual year, where national Democrats are boycotting their party's New Hampshire primary.
"Multiple people have brought it up to me," said Kerri Harrington, an acupuncturist running for a local council seat this year in Littleton, N.H.
"Just in conversation [people will say], 'We could actually turn this around and get Nikki a lot more votes and have Trump not do as well.'"
Harrington dropped in on a recent Haley event in her area and noticed how politically mixed the crowd was, with plenty of Democrats: "There was a lot of purple in that room."
